A BEARY RAINY DAY

It all happens one morning when “weather is being the peskiest pest.”

Wallow the Bear is just heading out to play when he notices a “rainstorm rolling along.” Wallow is, as his name suggests, “unfortunately, a quite gloomy fellow” who “always [gets] sad when it start[s] to rain.” So Wallow heads inside and hunkers down in his cozy cave, but his frustration rises with the water level. When he finally tries to sleep through the rest of the storm, the sounds of splashing and laughter echo in his cave. When Wallow looks out, he sees his friend, Little Cub, playing in the rain puddles, and Wallow’s frown turns into a smile. Thanks to Little Cub’s friendship and positive attitude, “Wallow always [plays] in the rain from that day on,” and, as the moral to the story, Wallow realizes that his “gloominess wasn’t because of the storm, / but because he’d never seen past the rain clouds before.” The text is set in, mostly, four-line stanzas, but, possibly due to the (uncredited) translation from the Dutch, scansion can be a challenge, and these stanzas often flow better when read as a couplet, sometimes with optional end rhymes. Cartoon illustrations feature woodland greens and browns; Wallow’s cave is realized in warm red-brown and beiges enclosed in a black cave outline. In the woodland scenes, diagonal lines subtly emphasize the rainfall and, later, the sunshine. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10.2-by-19.6-inch double-page spreads viewed at 31.2% of actual size.)

A good snuggle-time read when rain turns everyone grumpy.