Tuesday Storytime: Stormy Days Ahead

With Florence looming dramatically offshore, and lots of locals either prepping their own properties for rain and floods, or dealing with friends and family evacuating from the shoreline, it's important to normalize weather events and how to deal with them.

It's also important to realize that when routines are shaken up and kids are unsettled from the chaos around them, they're going to act up and be less able to focus on anything: even storytime. It's always better to work with what the kids are capable of at the moment.

Because we had some unsettled kids and families, we only made it through two books today, one of which was very short. That's ok. It's better to have a short but good storytime experience than to make it a stressful or disciplinarian time.

Monsoon Afternoon
Kashmira Sheth, illustrated by Yoshiko Jaeggi
ISBN: 9781561454556
In India, a boy watches the first rains of monsoon season approach, but the rest of the household is busy with work, all except for his grandfather, his Dadaji. The boy and his dadaji play outside in the rain for the afternoon, talking about how the monsoon came when the grandfather was a child, and will continue to come when the boy is a grandfather himself.

Rain Fish
Lois Ehlert
ISBN: 9781481461528
Another of Ehlert's excellent collage books, this one is another short and sweet entry. The format is highly horizontal, so be aware when holding it that it's a little harder to keep balanced. There are some weird and wacky fish made of trash and gutter debris, with a fun rhyme to balance the weirdness out. I do wish there was some way to talk about cleaning UP the materials that make up the Rain Fish, but that's probably a bit of a high bar for a book as conceptual and visual as this is.

I was also planning to read
Thunder-Boomer!
Shutta Crum, illustrated by Carol Thompson
ISBN: 9780618618561
which features a farming family that is much more familiar to my local families here. A storm is blowing in, and the family retreats to the house while the storm and wind and hail and rain all blow past, then head back out into the muddy and windblown aftermath to see what's happened outside. A sub-plot with a chicken ends up being the tagline for the book - very cute. 

Monsoon Afternoon & My Dadima Wears a Sari, Kashmira Sheth, illustrated by Yokisho Jaeggi

These two are simply beautiful picture books, and the stories in each are sweet interactions between children and their grandparents.

Monsoon Afternoon is set in India, and My Dadima Wears a Sari is set in America. 

In the first, a boy and his grandfather (his dadaji) go out and play in the first rains of the monsoon season, and the boy hears all about how his dadaji also played with his own dadaji, and the monsoon came every year, and so back through time.  The love and gentleness is sweet and uplifting, and there's nothing religious or political to take away from the simple message of a child enjoying time with a loving older relative.

My Dadima Wears a Sari has a grandmother who always wears a sari talking about all of her beautiful saris and the memories she has of them with her two granddaughters, and ends with them all dressing up in her favorites.  Again, the message is simple and the story is sweet - the dadima and granddaughter talk about all the useful things that can be done with saris, but the point is also made that they are beautiful and remind her of her past, and that she enjoys wearing them for those reasons also. 

Both simply gorgeous works, and I'm very glad to have run across them.