RAIN, RAIN RIVERS

A quotation from Lao Tzu — "Without going out of my door/ I know the universe" — and a reminder "in a raindrop (is) the ocean," both on the flap, express the substance of the book, and express it more forcibly than the book itself. The failure is somewhere in the illustrations: in the cold, distancing blues and yellows and greens, in the immobile streams of water like frozen ribbons, in the uneasy conjunction of concrete abstraction, suggestive naturalism and comical whimsy. The text, however, is tersely poetic and although adults may be disconcerted, children won't be, by the resemblance of the beginning to the opening of One Monday Morning: the rain-washed window, the rain-slicked street. But here it is raining harder, blotting out the buildings, "rushing down the eaves, gushing out the drainpipes. The little girl snug behind her dormer window thinks "Tomorrow I'll sail my little boats," Meanwhile it rains over fields... hills... grass... ponds. "Rills roll down hills, fall into brooks, rush into rivers and race to the seas.... Ocean are swelling. Melting the skies... Tomorrow new plants will grow... We'll run barefoot in puddles and stamp in warm mud." Right now "The plant on my window is beginning to grow. I know it." Lyrical and sometimes lovely, sometimes impressive (especially the swelling oceans) but always there's a certain remoteness, a failure to engage the viewer directly.