Puddle

Illustrated by Hyewon Yum

“Oh, my! What’s that? / It’s a PUDDLE!”

This beautifully illustrated picture book, blending watercolour and coloured pencil, portrays a mother and son transforming a gloomy rainy day into a joyful adventure of imagination and puddle-splashing. The mother encourages her dispirited son, who dislikes rainy days, to engage in drawing the rain. This creative act becomes a means of awakening his warm spirit and deepening his connection with the rain, his surroundings, his mother, and his dog, Billy. Through this process, the son gradually rediscovers a sense of playfulness, expressed in actions such as jumping into a puddle and splashing about. The mother and son, accompanied by Billy in a cape, step outside into the rain and together leap into a puddle.

Puddle supports climate change education by showing how everyday weather and local rhythms, such as rain and puddles, connect us to the broader climate system. This story invites reflection on interconnectedness, the water cycle, seasons, and the emotional and social importance of caring for our surroundings. Puddle accomplishes this, in part, by dissolving the boundary between art and lived experience; the characters become physically wet in parallel with their drawing of a splash in a puddle. This gesture shows young readers that the environment is a permeable aspect of the natural world that interacts far more intimately with domestic life than we tend to acknowledge. The text highlights weather variability and the value of slowing down to observe and appreciate nature. These themes echo the core principles of climate literacy: recognizing how human lives are entwined with Earth’s climate system, understanding the role of weather and water in daily life, and cultivating respect for the environment. It also raises thoughtful questions about how shifting climate patterns might affect our ability to find joy in simple acts like splashing in puddles, and how children’s everyday experiences of the seasons might be reshaped.

By showing the child drawing the storm before stepping into it, the narrative confers a sense of agency. The boy shifts from a passive recipient of dreary weather to an active participant in its imaginative construction, modeling the mindset required for cultivating climate resilience. By grounding the child’s joyful reconnection with rain and water in a shared experience of creative play and maternal support, the story nurtures emotional attachment to local climate and environment, thereby laying a foundation for positive climate emotions, such as empathy and wonder, as well as earth stewardship. The narrative also resists the cultural tendency to vilify precipitation. By moving from the declaration “I hate rainy days” to the realisation “This is fun!”, Yum challenges the binary of “good” versus “bad” weather. This reframing is crucial for climate literacy, encouraging a shift away from valuing nature only when it suits human leisure and towards appreciating both the necessity of the water cycle and the distinctive sensory pleasures afforded by variable weather conditions. In this way, the text points towards intergenerational responsibility, demonstrating that climate is not only a global issue but also a force that shapes human experience, memory and care.

©2026 ClimateLit (Md Mahmud Hussain)

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016

Audience: Ages 4-7

ISBN: 9780374316952

Pages: 40

Lexile Score: 280L

Format: Picturebooks

Topics: Climate Change Education, Climate Emotions, Climate Literacy, Earth Stewardship, Interconnectedness, Nature, Nature's Cycles, Place-Based Knowledge, Resilience, Seasons, Water, Water Cycle, Weather