A Place for Rain

This upbeat problem-solving story starts as rain begins to fall in a neighborhood portrayed with colorblock buildings. Gómez (Very Good Hats) renders children of various skin tones in the windows of a yellow school bus, like wooden dolls gazing out at the downpour. Elsewhere, a child pedestrian with brown skin gazes into a gutter, where “oil and grime and mud” from the street wash into waterways, “clogging rivers, ponds, and lakes.” Is there a way to “lessen all this mess? YES!” reads a page showing a queue of schoolchildren alongside a rain-slickered adult. The kids roll a rain barrel to catch water from the school’s downspout (“Water saved for droughty days”), then engineer a stream for the overflow to run into a “spongy, pooling place.” The saucer of land is next planted with native varieties that have “tough, thick roots” and “filter out that grime and soil” as the rain percolates into the ground and attracts new wildlife. Schaub (Kindness is a Kite String) uses onomatopoeia (“Plink. Plip. Plop.”) and emphatic statements (“FLOOD!”) to convey the feel of water’s halt and flow in this low-tech guide to rain gardens. Further instructions conclude. Ages 4–8. Author’s agent: Lisa Amstutz, Storm Literary. Illustrator’s agent: Rebecca Sherman, Writers House. (Mar.)