Come on, Rain

Christine Alfano

Come On, Rain! has depth and grace and a sweet, understated current of celebration. The story is as refreshing as a long-awaited rainshower... you can almost smell the rain on hot asphalt.
— Riverbank Review

Children's Literature - Jacki Vawter

In a hot city in the summer, a child spies the clouds rolling in. "Come on, rain!" she whispers. The neighborhood girls pull on their bathing suits and as the dust dances with the first rain drops, the friends dance and play in the streaming rain. The mammas join the girls in sweet abandon. The city street fills with the laughter and joy that only a summer shower can bring. Hesse writes beautiful words to capture the anticipation and exhilaration. "We turn in circles, glistening in our rain skin." The before, during and after rain scenes are spare watercolors producing the sequence of endless heat, a cloudburst and happy wetness. Ethnic diversity is represented among the characters with color coordination for each mother-daughter pair. The book is an eloquent celebration of a shared and simple experience.

School Library Journal

K-Gr 3-Karen Hesse's celebration of rain (Scholastic, 1999) receives quality treatment in this evocative presentation. A young girl, along with other residents in her multiethnic inner-city neighborhood, wilt in the oppressive heat of summer. When the rain sweeps in, she and her friends frolic in their bathing suits. The video scans Jon J. Muth's watercolor illustrations, adding a bit of animation. Background music changes with the weather and the energetic narration skillfully follows the book's pace. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Horn Book Magazine

In this lyrical and evocative picture book, Hesse explores the anticipation and joy of a summer storm following weeks without rain in an urban neighborhood. While Tessie's mother struggles with her failing tomato plants, Tess darts off to find her pal Jackie-Joyce at the first sight of gray clouds. "A creeper of hope circles 'round my bones. 'Come on, rain!' I whisper," and Tess is quickly back at her apartment with her friend trying to convince her mother to let her put on her bathing suit. Their friends Liz and Rosemary soon join them, and the four girls wait outside as the rain descends. "It streams through our hair and down our backs. It freckles our feet, glazes our toes. We turn in circles, glistening in our rain skin. Our mouths wide, we gulp down rain." The girls' infectious joy quickly spreads to their mothers: they come out on their porches and "fling off their shoes, skim off their hose, tossing streamers of stockings over their shoulders," and the daughters "swing our wet and wild-haired mammas 'til we're all laughing under trinkets of silver rain." Hesse's delicately crafted text creates a wonderful sense of atmosphere; the stifling, oppressive heat radiates through her words ("the smell of hot tar and garbage bullies the air"). Muth's beautifully drafted watercolor paintings begin in hot yellows, purples, and oranges and subtly change to rain-cloud gray as the storm approaches. A welcome celebration of summer in the city.

Kirkus Reviews

Hesse (Just Juice, p. 1600, etc.) hits some high notes in this story of parched summer days in the city. Young Tess watches as her mother tends to her woeful wilting vegetable patch; the heat is enveloping. Tess, from her perch on the fire escape, scans the sky in hopes of deliverance, and sure enough, those are rain clouds she spies. When the clouds break, everyone steps joyfully to the rain dance. Hesse's language is a quiet, elegant surge—" `Rain's coming, Mamma,' I say. Mamma turns to the window and sniffs. `It's about time,' she murmurs," but it can become ornate ("trinkets of silver rain" and music that "streaks like night lightning") and jarring amid the contained beauty of the rest of the writing. Muth contributes fine watercolor atmospherics, in sultry summer scenes where the heat is almost palpable, and raucous wet scenes of jubilant dancers. (Picture book. 4-8) .