Downpour: Splish! Splash! Ker-splash!
by Yuko Ohnari and Koshiro Hata; illus. by the authors; trans. from Japanese by Emily Balistrieri
Preschool    Red Comet    40 pp.
3/25    9781636551142    $18.99

Vivid illustrations and enthusiastic prose evoke the surprise and awe of a summer rainstorm in this Japanese import. A child narrator peers out the front door to scowl at the weather; the neighborhood trees and buildings are flat and saturated, with wavy edges implying heat radiating off the “hot, hot!” pavement. It’s too hot to have much fun, until dark clouds roll in, rain falls, and the child is enchanted by the sights, sounds, and sensations of the sudden deluge. As the storm gathers force, the artistic style softens, the rain bringing more shading and loose texture to the double-page spreads. The rain’s gentle “Plip! Plip! Plip!” builds into a frantic percussion, the onomatopoeic sounds spelled out in bright yellow text against the darkening sky. The engaging art is punctuated by our narrator’s canny, lyrical observations—“My umbrella’s a drum”; “The rain is singing!”; “Raindrops…run down my cheeks, my eyelids, and past my ears. A slide!” Shifts in visual perspective—such as an ultra-close-up view of raindrops bouncing off the ground that give way to a peek under the child’s yellow umbrella from below—invite viewers to share in the delight that is so clear in the narrator’s face. A joyful and refreshing multisensory experience.

From the May/June 2025 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.