James and The Rain, by Karla Kuskin, is poetry book about a young boy with a yellow rain jacket and an oversized umbrella, who takes a walk through the rain one day with a cow. The boy and the cow share their mutual love of the rain and continue their walk together. Along the way James will meet many other animals, all of which will join him and the cow on their walk through the rain. There are two reasons why I liked this book. One reason being that I liked the structure and repetition of language because it added fluidity to the story. For example, at the end of every other page, the most recently featured animal would say, “…if we’re not wrong/ It might be nice if we strolled along.”
I also liked the illustrations in this book because they enhanced the playful mood of the story. When the mice came along in the story they said, “We pick red flowers/ Out of their beds/ And wear them as hats/ To cover our heads. On this page Kuskin illustrated animals, looking very peculiar, with flowers, large and small, on their heads. The pages are not very colorful; in fact there are only 3 colors, besides black, in the entire book. However, Kuskin manipulated color to emphasize the most important parts of the pictures such as James’ raincoat. ( )