A River Running Through You – Perfect Picture Book Friday

Sometimes you catch a glimpse of a cover and think a book has promise. And when you open it and start reading, that promise is blown out of the water—in a good way. That’s the case with today’s featured picture book.

If I were teaching in my son’s outdoor education school, I would definitely read this book to the 4th and 5th graders. It’s a perfect crossover between STEM and art, in the poetic and meditative nature of the science writing about (so much more than) the water cycle and in the sophistication of the book’s illustrations.

Here’s the opening spread:

Have you ever lingered on a riverbank
watching the water flow, and wondered where
it comes from or where it might be going?

These are very old questions.

And old questions often
have stories for answers.

If you could follow the water everywhere it goes, you would find
yourself on a never-ending journey through time and space.

Notice how the child in the illustration has a ghost self that’s walking into the water. Also notice the river otters disappearing into the lower right hand corner of the page.

Then on the page turn, an otter glides across the page in the river. The ghost child is now observing from behind the limbs of the tree.

A river is water's chance to dance under the Sun,
and to speak its stories.

What might it tell you about the places it has been?

The words stimulate the senses, alluding to the river’s sounds and its kinetic presence as it rushes through the landscape. And then it ends with the lure of a question!

Let’s take a moment to admire the illustrations. There is so much movement in the landscape and shadowy elements that speak to ancient history. The art does a marvelous job of complementing and extending the mystery and wonder of the text.

Throughout the book, the narrative describes the ocean and its salty currents, the shift of water’s form as it swirls through the atmosphere, the memory of water held in glaciers, how water finds its way deep into the earth and then resurfaces to be “reborn,” how”tiny rivers” seep through the soil, and how water pools in lakes and bogs and swamps and marshes and fens, and how it nurtures life in all of these places.

But then the spotlight focuses on the reader.

Listen. The river might share a secret.
You are the many times great-grandchild
of a fish it once knew.

The water that held the fish
is also running through you.

But water is only with us for a 
short time before it moves on
to become something else.

Our long-ago ancestors lived in water for billions of years
before some unusual fish began using their fins
as limbs to crawl instead of swim.

Each of us begins our lives in a safe, dark pool of womb-water called
amniotic fluid. Like the sea where all life began, it is warm and salty.

I can imagine the conversations this would spark as kids begin to think about evolution and their place in Earth’s long history. And then ponder how water has lived countless lives, each one “an adventure.”

I wish I could show you every page of this book. But I’ll contain my enthusiasm. I’ll just end by saying that the last couple of spreads allude to the changing nature and power of water and how it makes the seemingly “impossible….possible.”

This acknowledgement of the odds against our very existence takes my breath away. We live on this Goldilocks planet with just the right atmosphere and just the right temperatures and just the right carbon-based life that depends on water for its existence. How lucky we are to be alive. How wondrous!

This is a marvelous book to use as a springboard for some pretty heady discussions about the natural world and our place in it.

Activities:

Pair this book with AWE! by Chana Stiefel, illustrated by Susan Gal. How does A RIVER RUNNING THROUGH YOU create a sense of awe?

Select a spread or page from the book and write its text out on a piece of paper, splitting the lines in the same places as they’re split in the book. Black out unwanted words from the lines to create a poem that relates to the topic of the book.

Draw a picture of what you think you looked like when you first crawled out of the ocean and became a land-dweller and then watch this YouTube video from Joe Does Biology about the first land animals to see how your drawing compares.

Title: A River Running Through You

Author: Amy-Jane Beer

Illustrator: Elin Manon

Publisher: Magic Cat, 2026

Ages: Elementary school

Themes: water cycle, evolution, STEM

For more perfect picture book recommendations, please visit Susanna Hill’s website.