MAYA'S RAINY DAY POEMS

A rhyming picture book explores the pleasures, fears, and tedium of rainy days.

This tale’s 3-year-old narrator, Maya, celebrates the joy of walking in the rain as the “raindrops play hide and seek with the Sun.” While Dad avoids puddles, Maya gleefully splashes in them. But once home, Maya’s mother says to stay inside. The child first delights in the cozy rainy day, then worries about the rain’s loud noises. Along with her brother, Kyle, Maya hides in a tent made of blankets while thunder rumbles outside. Both children go off to bed. The next day, Maya enjoys the sun. In this series opener, the poet, whose pen name is Maya and Jello, creates comfortable rhyming phrases that maintain a mostly consistent rhythm. The variations to the scansion are easy to detect, and each page reads aloud well. Gustyawan’s cheerful digital cartoon illustrations, which depict a brown-skinned, curly-haired family, ably portray Maya’s range of emotions. The clear linework from these images has also been highlighted in a companion coloring book. But the picture book’s design, in which the two-page spreads feature awkward connections at the seams—offsetting a window so that the frame is disjointed, and misaligning a sidewalk and lawn in a background—mars the otherwise engaging pictures. Still, Maya’s openness and the clearly loving family are likely to encourage readers to return for future adventures.

A lively, well-illustrated, but unevenly designed work that examines rainy-day feelings.