An Usborne Beginners reader about storms, built the way the series always is: short sentences, large type, and a full color photograph or painted illustration on every page, so a child reading on their own is never facing a wall of text.

Wild winds opens the book on pages 8 and 9 with the damage side of weather, a wave breaking clean over a sea wall onto a flooded promenade, roof tiles and trees knocked flat by a gale, a ship rolling in heavy seas, and a small aside explaining that palm trees bend in strong wind precisely so they do not blow over. Electric skies, pages 14 and 15, takes a thundercloud apart in four numbered panels, warm damp air rising, hailstones and rain churning up and down inside the cloud, the charge that builds when they rub together, and the flash that leaps back down, then gives forked lightning a full page photograph over a dark lake and finishes with the reason you always see it before you hear it. Dry storms, pages 18 and 19, is the opposite weather: sun baked ground cracking into pieces, the loose soil lifting into a wall of dust, herders driving their sheep through a dust storm in Afghanistan thick enough to blot out the sun, and the fact that a camel can close its nostrils to keep it out.

Thirty two pages at about 6.1 by 8.3 inches, written by Emily Bone and illustrated by Paul Weston. Photograph led rather than diagram led, which is what makes it hold a four year old who is not reading every word yet.

Paperback, 32 pages, 6.1 by 8.3 in (156 by 210 mm), from the Usborne Beginners series. Usborne Publishing Ltd., July 2024. ISBN-13 9781835402474. Publisher age guidance: 4 and up.

The rest of the Usborne Beginners readers on our shelf: Beginners: Trees, Beginners: Weather, Beginners: Volcanoes, Beginners: Earthquakes and Tsunamis, Beginners: Firefighters, Beginners: Horses and Ponies and Beginners: Caterpillars and Butterflies.