Rain

The impact of haiku and illustrations by Swedish creator Holmer (Everything Happens!) is muted—at first. The short poems, as the title promises, examine rainy weather. A series of landscapes, all double-page paintings, span the globe and feature a collection of curious, unexpected scenarios. Someone drops a newspaper off a rope bridge in the Himalayas. In a downpour on a street in some tropical city, “The car radio/ plays a song about the sun,/ but no one hears it.” A person rows through a bayou with a donkey for a passenger. The paintings, friezelike sweeps in quiet earth tones, hold interest in every corner, brushed in delicate, even exquisite detail. Verse and image combine over the pages to create a distinctive view of the world—puckish (“Beneath ashes are/ seeds for a new forest that/ might burn someday too”) and attuned to events large and small (in a spread of children riding horses in a driving rain, “Hooves thunder above/ moles digging underground, and/ Grandma is calling”). Incident, humor, and close observation all conspire to invite readers to see rain—and the world—in new ways. Ages 4–8. [em](Oct.) [/em]