Rain Player

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Really young children who are susceptible to nightmares may be better steered away from the book until they are older and better able to take it into concept since the artwork can be truly scary-like. It was very long for a picture book and had a lot of language that may not be comprehendible for the younger audience that it was intended for. Seeking out ``that brown face of hope'' once again, Booker gains a sense of the sounds represented by letters, and these become his deliverance. Married six months later, the Wisniewskis started their own troupe, Clarion Shadow Theatre, specializing in shadow puppetry.

Regardless, this is an immensely satisfying, accomplished work, resonating first with longing and then with joy. The predictable plot is geared to newly independent readers who are not yet ready for the usual heft of contemporary fantasies. Readers follow him on his quest in Malden, Virginia, where he finds inspiration in a man ``brown as me'' reading a newspaper on a street corner. Furthermore although the illustrator has acknowledged that the art isn't truly 100% it is a good nod to the actual drawings that can be seen within Mayan artifacts.Although not fully giving the reader a true sense of Mayan identity it is a good stepping stone for those who may be interested or those who need a bit of a cultural change in their reading no matter what their age may be. Unwittingly, the duo bonds with the creature by feeding it, and it later follows them back to the bus.

The icing to the literary cake is the wealth of information in the afterword about all things Mayan - whether it's pronunciation of the game pok-a-tok, illumination about the importance of Quetzals, or even just defining what a cenote is. The ancient Mayan belief that the future was divinely decreed and could not be changed is the basis for this original tale of a boy who must defeat the Rain God in a ball game to save his people from disaster. Thankfully, he hits it off with fellow new student, “punk rock”–looking Uchenna Devereaux, a black girl with twists (though they actually look like dreads in Aly’s illustrations). In 1980, they started the Clarion Puppet Theatre (later known as the Clarion Shadow Theatre) which toured in schools, theaters and at the Smithsonian.

In this cultural legend, one has to appeal humbly and righteously to nature to bring the rain that nourishes the corn, and thereby nourishes life.