RED RUBBER BOOT DAY

The team that produced the fabulously squishy Mud (1996) has done it again. From the moment a small boy presses his “nose against the screen and smell[s] the smell of screen and rain,” a rainy day offers delights. Ray poetically catalogs them—just listening and watching with the gray cat; drawing at a table with the orange cat; building block cities; reading; playing cars; playing cave in his closet—or, if it’s still raining, going outside. “I am leaf. I am fish.” The child, whom readers have seen in gloriously detailed, full-bleed, full-spread acrylics, “swims” past his next-door neighbor, who has come out onto the grass barefoot to enjoy the “green rain.” The boy prefers puddle-jumping in his “Red rubber made-for-rain boots,” but when he wades “into blue sky,” he's happy to see the sun again. Happy child, to delight in the best of both sides of a rain/shine day! This exuberantly glowing book will make readers want to go out and slap in some puddles. (Picture book. 3-7)