We've finally had some rain here, so it's time for our Summer Showers storytime - I usually do one in spring and one in late summer after the Summer Reading Program finishes off. In South Carolina, summer is absolutely not over at the end of July - we're just getting started. Last year it didn't cool down til November, and I don't see that changing much this year either.
Thunder-Boomer!
Shutta Crum, illustrated by Carol Thompson
ISBN: 9780618918651
Loose free scribbly lines and washes of color and lots of small panels and vignettes.
The panels and vignettes make this a little less suitable for storytime, but we had a small-ish group today, so it worked out pretty well. I love the loose flowing scribbly lines and the slightly sloppy washes of color everywhere, and the differences between the wide-open outside and the slightly cramped and crowded inside. We start on a hot country afternoon: dad's plowing, mom and kids are cooling by the pond, and a "Thunder-Boomer" rolls in, prompting a scramble: tractor put away, chickens hustled back into the coop, laundry pulled off the line. The bottom falls out, and poor Dad has to run out to rescue a last broody chicken, and then it's just huddling together while the storm rolls through. After the rain and wind and hail die back down, they emerge to a wet and clean world, and a tiny kitten, courtesy of the broody chicken and drenched by the storm.
The Big Storm! A Very Soggy Counting Book
Nancy Tafuri
ISBN: 9781416967958
Oddly paced, but short and sweet: forest animals take refuge one by one in a small cave - surprise bears!
Tafuri's lovely drawings with their vibrant colors and clear lines are perfect for this short and sweet count-up-and-back-down. The frontispieces show a pair of bears heading into a hillside cave, and then the story begins with the smaller woodland creatures swooping in to take refuge from the storm - as the numbers and the animals reveal, they don't know the bears are already there! All ten crowd in for the night of storms and rumbly thunder, but in the morning the sky is clear, but why can they still hear thunder so loudly? A mad scramble for the outdoors makes up the count-back-down, and the bears are left peacefully asleep.
Tap Tap Boom Boom
Elizabeth Bluemle, illustrated by G. Brian Karas
ISBN: 9780763656966
An urban thunderstorm brings umbrella vendors and a retreat into the subway station.
The short choppy rhythms of this book and the syncopated speaking patterns and slant-rhymes (at least for me) make this a challenge to read fluidly, but it's a really great book, especially for my area, which is a lot more familiar with farms and suburbs than with subways and city sidewalks. A Tap Tap Boom Boom rolls in, and as the rain soaks through everything, people retreat to the subway station for refuge and a chance to dry off and socialize for a bit before re-emerging to find a scrubbed-clean city and a nice rainbow. This one also is good for humanizing and normalizing city life, again a challenge for this particular area. For a city-life trio, I'd pair it with Nana in the City and I don't know what else.
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