SPENCER CHRISTIAN’S WEATHER BOOK by Spencer Christian...

SPENCER CHRISTIAN’S WEATHER BOOK by Spencer Christian with Tom Biracree (Prentice Hall: $12; 216 pp., illustrated, paperback original). In recent years, television news programs have begun turning their weathermen into starlets--much the way fairy-tale princesses spin straw into gold. This rather superficial book from Spencer Christian of ABC’s “Good Morning America” illustrates the phenomenon. Although the authors present some basic information about meteorology, they seem less interested in the weather than in Christian--who portrays himself alternately as a serious journalist and the jolly master of the inane badinage that passes for wit on the airwaves. (“I’ve never admitted this on the air, but I have an infallible way to make it rain: It’s called ‘scheduling a barbecue.’ ”) Like many television news shows, “Weather Book” suffers from an overabundance of cutesiness and a dearth of hard facts.