RAIN PLAY
by Cynthia Cotten & illustrated by Javaka Steptoe
The children in Steptoe’s crumpled-tissue collages don’t leave the playground when the sky darkens or the rain starts coming down more and more heavily—but come a FLASH! and a BOOM!, it’s “Uh-oh. / Time to go. / Hurry, hurry, / scoot and scurry.” Superimposed on the art’s wrinkled surfaces, the text’s short couplets won’t be a challenge even for newly emergent readers, and the laughing, brown- and yellow-skinned figures dance through the elongated raindrops with infectiously joyous abandon. The stream of rainy-day tales never seems to abate, but this stands out as one of the simplest, both in language and feeling. (Picture book. 4-6)