Yuko Ohnari and Koshiro Hata, a married Japanese creative couple, present a jubilant picture book, Downpour: Splish! Splash! Ker-Splash!, that celebrates the endless delights of a summer rainstorm.
"The ground's burning hot," a child notices. Looking up reveals "dark clouds... coming this way." Almost immediately, raindrops begin to "PLIP! PLIP! PLIP!" The child's keen observations are immediate: "it smells like the sky. It smells like the ground, too." Opening an oversized yellow umbrella provides temporary shelter to enjoy the drum-like sounds of the falling rain. But soon enough, the child is freely running and jumping through the downpour: "All the raindrops come to me./ They all come talk to me." Sopping wet, the child returns home filled with energetic joy. The fate of the discarded shoes may be uncertain, but the yellow umbrella pops back up just in time for bathtime fun.
While Ohnari and Hata's focus is clearly on the child's evolving reactions--concern, endurance, elation, gratitude--they're also carefully attentive to his surroundings: the neighborhood's diverse houses, a few with parked cars, the flora and fauna (including ladybugs and beetles trying not to be washed away!), and various iterations of the rainstorm. Their vivaciously colorful spreads are an exuberant multisensory invitation--not just to witness the child's whimsical, cheerful abandon but to imagine the very sounds of watery merriment. Translator Emily Balistrieri rises to the challenge of the duo's English-language debut, with plenty of rhythmic onomatopoeia: "FWISH FWISH... SPOOSH-SPLOOSH-SPLOOSH. SPLISH... KER-FWOOOOOOOOSH." Every moment of boisterous play is delightfully captured in text and image. --Terry Hong