The Day of the Rainbow

A rainbow after a shower brings pleasure to three cranky people and helps them find what they were looking for.

Kindergarten-Grade 2-- On a hot summer day in the city, various people have lost something and try to find it among the crowds. The rhyme, repetition, and the visual game of finding a lost item are clever and appealing, but as a total piece, The Day of the Rainbow just does not work: flow and continuity are not evident. The layout is awkward; the text in cut-off corners of the double-page watercolor paintings are both abrupt and intrusive. Although there exist lush moments in the paintings--the roses on the ground where Leroy searches, the face of Eleni in tears--the total visual impact has too many flaws. The richness of a variety of cultures shown here should be exciting, but in this story of people who lose things and find them, some essential part of making a book is lost, and is never found. --Gratia Banta, Germantown Public Library, Ohio
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A girl named Nerinder, a boy named Leroy and a woman, Mrs. Poppodopolous, all lose a precious item in the bustle of city streets on a hot summer day. Then the rain cools down the streets, and a rainbow forms, seeming to light on those three lost objects. When the items are found, order is restored and the city becomes a friendly place. Craft revels in the cacophony of the urban setting, giving her verse a halting beat that is full of stops and starts and surprising leaps. Daly takes the cantankerous text and brings a visible, pressing tension to the pictures in his sweeps of watercolor: the people are grim-faced and the word "Freedom" adorns a man's T-shirt. The atmosphere, in the opening pages, is downright surlythe city is an angry place that indifferently swallows up treasures; but by the story's end, the tangible pot of gold for each character reveals the city's very human face. If outwardly, the book's aims (and title) seem obvious, the core of the piece is a distilled and affecting definition of city dwelling. Ages 3-8.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.