The Great Lakes Our Freshwater Treasure

A stunning picture book about the five largest lakes in North America - how they formed, the importance of their abundant freshwater, and how they've become a national treasure - in the latest book from the author of Caldecott Honor book The Noisy Paint Box.

The Great Lakes—Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior—are five blue jewels set a bit off center in a belt across North America’s middle. Bordered by eight states and part of Canada, the Lakes hold 21% of the world's fresh water. How did these incredible lakes get there? And what can we do to preserve such a treasure?

Follow along as a drop of water in this enormous system and uncover its dramatic journey from lake to rive to lake, over Niagara Falls to lake and river again, and finally into the Atlantic Ocean.

Barb Rosenstock is the author of the Caldecott Honor Book The Noisy Paint Box, Vincent Can't Sleep, Through the Window, and Mornings with Monet, as well as many other books. Her most recent book, Mystery of the Monarchs, is a 2023 NCTE Orbis Pictus Recommended Title and a Junior Library Guild Selection. She lives outside of Chicago with her husband, sons, and two big poodles. Barb has always lived near the Great Lakes, and wrote this book to satisfy her lifelong curiosity in their formation.

Jamey Christoph's illustrations have appeared in The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and in several award winning children’s books such as Bones in the White House, Stonewall, Up in the Leaves, and Outside My Window. He has received multiple recognitions from the Society of Illustrators, Communication Arts, and 3×3 Magazine.  He works out of his 1920's home in Cleveland Heights, OH, where he loves to visit Lake Eerie with his crazy dogs, Jack and Teddy.