Big Rain Coming (Hardcover)
July 5, 2009 by Aussie
Filed under Outback Guide Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
This well-crafted picture book from an Australian team brings the dry and dusty reaches of the outback straight to American readers. On Sunday, Old Stephen, a white-bearded Aborigine, predicts rain, but it takes all week to arrive. With each day that passes, anticipation builds like the dark clouds on the horizon and everyone struggles to keep cool. On Monday, “The night was so warm Rosie’s kids dragged their beds outside to maybe feel some breeze while they s (more…)
Big Rain Coming is the kind of picture book teachers dream about. It deals with a culture and situation unfamiliar to most of us, but these are revealed as natural background, natural characters, natural situations. The one thing Big Rain Coming does not reek of is the ‘shove it down your throat’ cross-cultural drudge that is found in far too many books written for young children.
Big Rain Coming tells a beautiful story with incredible lyrical simplicity.
As an author, simplicity is the hardest of all to master. Germein has done it beautifully here.
The location, the characters are wonderfully authentic and I know, because I’ve lived and worked in such places too.
Big Rain Coming is a wonderful book to use when teaching because all children can relate to the feeling of waiting for rain, yet they can compare many aspects of the people’s lives to their own and see huge differences as well as the many similarities.
The artwork is beautiful, although I’m not a great fan of Bronwyn Bancroft’s work. It is unfortunate that because she is a well-known artist, much of the acclaim for the book has been directed towards the illustrator, and not the author who created this brilliant piece of literature.
It doesn’t get any better than this.