Wind Atlas: Everything you need to know about wind
By Sarah Zambello
Illustrated by Susy Zanella
Produced in collaboration with the University of Genoa
Reviewed by Mia Macrossan
This carefully researched and designed book is a companion volume to Wave Atlas: Everything you need to know about waves, by the same creators. Here again we have the meticulous research, informative and atmospheric illustrations and a clear and accessible writing style that made Wave Atlas so memorable.
Wind Atlas as its name suggests attempts to tell you everything you need to know about wind. After a brief introduction which explains ancient theories the reader discovers how winds are created – its all about pressure and heat.Various forces, including the earth’s rotation affect how wind moves around. 
Weather fronts, monsoons and mountains all have different effects creating land and sea breezes. A large part of the book is about how the wind is measured, who first worked out a usable system and what we use now. There are detailed explanations of the Wind Rose, the Beaufort Scale (a fascinating story) and the Fujita scale (Mr Tornado)
The book is a charming blend of science and literature with references, poems, quotes about wind scattered throughout the text, for example, the front endpapers tell us about a magical nanny borne on the East Wind to Cherry Tree Land and carried away by West Wind, while the back endpapers provide details about Aeolus, the satellite launched into Polar orbit to measure terrestrial winds from space. It also answers Lorenz’s famous question of whether a butterfly flying in Brazil can set off a tornado in Texas…
The end matter includes a glossary, notes, and a bibliography, but no index.
This informative and beautiful book is highly recommended for school libraries and for anyone curious about how the world works, aged 10+
