The Rain Came Down
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Caldecott Honor artist David Shannon captures the chaos that follows an unexpected downpour in this engaging story.Once upon a sunny day, the sky clouded over, and the rain came down. The chickens squawked, the dog barked, the baby cried, the traffic snarled, the groceries fell, the people bickered, and still, the rain came down.In pictures full of wit and good-natured humor, Caldecott Honor artist David Shannon captures the chaos that follows an unexpected downpour.Rain or shine, here is an engaging story that will brighten the day of any reader.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Raindrops set off a chain reaction of temper tantrums, but a sudden break in the clouds makes the bad moods melt. A series of isolated vignettes begins with a noisy, muddy dog that aggravates its owner, so "the man yelled at the dog and woke up the baby.... The dog barked louder. And still, the rain came down." Outside, a taxi driver beeps at a stopped truck, and in the next frame, the truck driver argues back. One by one, shop owners collide with pedestrians as tension accumulates, all to the refrain, "And still, the rain came down." After this series of intense close-ups, Shannon (No, David!) gives a bird's-eye view of the whole scene: small-town storefronts, bumper-to-bumper traffic and irritable people. But in the next spread, he swings down to street level and captures the moment that "the rain stopped! And so did the noise." The sunshine changes everything, and a second sequence of highly detailed paintings revisits each of the now-cooperative characters. Shannon expertly uses vertiginous angles as he builds suspense, then calms things down with a set of subdued portraits and a view of a quiet afternoon picnic. However, unlike Charlotte Zolotow's similarly conceived The Quarreling Book, which took a child's point of view, here the action is primarily among adults and may not hold readers' attention for repeated readings. Ages 3-up.
