Review by Booklist Review
In a fresh and breezy addition to the shelf of rainstorm-themed picture books, clouds scurry across darkening skies and the wind rises. Myers depicts two children exchanging waves, calls, and notes from atop realistically detailed urban apartment buildings separated by a street but linked by a hastily emptied clothesline. The apartment dwellers aren't the only ones with laundry, however. "The skies had hung out their freshly washed clouds to dry," Kooser begins, extending the motif as signs of oncoming rain prompt one sky to unpin "damp sheets of cirrus" from a contrail, another visible from a different angle to carry off "great armloads of altocumulus," and further skies to sweep other types of clouds out of the way of a "huge cumulonimbus" that at last plumps down over the city to drop its watery load. One brief, refreshing shower later, the skies leave behind "a green laundry basket with a handle that looked like"--and actually is, in the final scene, arcing brightly and gracefully over that clothesline--"a rainbow." A meteorological masterpiece, both playful and adeptly crafted.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In lusciously stroked spreads, Myers (Children of the Forest) paints two children on the rooftops of facing brick buildings, a clothesline strung between them. As they wave at each other and their caretakers peg laundry on the line, another sort of washing rolls through behind them: building an extended metaphor, Kooser (Marshmallow Clouds) describes various cloud types as celestial laundry hung out by the skies. One sky "was unpinning its damp sheets/ of cirrus from a frayed airplane contrail" as another "hurriedly wadded up socks, T-shirts,/ and underpants of cirrocumulus and stuffed them/ into a basket woven of sunbeams." Reflected altocumulus, on-the-move cumulus, and more cloud types scud into view in artful illustrations that show magnificent, billowing clouds dwarfing the buildings and the children. As the sky darkens, "dragging a heavy drop cloth of stratocumulus," a storm blows in. Far from driving the children inside, the weather gives rise to a new connection, eventually visualized through another dazzling phenomenon that arcs between their buildings. Dramatic visual storytelling incorporates layers of power and feeling throughout a work that neatly, playfully illuminates cloud forms and their scientific descriptors. Characters are portrayed with various skin tones. Ages 4--8. (July)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A lightly personified series of skies puts out its cloudy laundry to dry while two human neighbors bond over the same task. Permeated with dense imagery and atmospheric art, Pulitzer Prize--winning poet Kooser's tale establishes that the skies have "hung out their freshly washed clouds" so that they might "smell like air." But soon the skies have "hurriedly wadded up [the] socks, T-shirts and underpants of cirrocumulus" into a "basket woven of sunbeams" to outrun the seventh sky, a "moth-eaten, dirty gray woolen blanket of stratus." A thunderstorm begins, gloriously unfurling on full-bleed double-page spreads. Kooser's picturesque poetry vividly shapes his living sky metaphors, whether they be billowing descriptions of "big muscly arms tattooed all over with all kinds of birds" or ominous portrayals of cumulonimbus clouds "squeezing the light out." Under those same dynamic skies, a pair of brown-skinned children hang laundry atop a pair of adjacent brick buildings. Their burgeoning friendship, told entirely visually through tentative waves and the clothes-pinned notes they exchange, is as enchanting as the breathtaking post-storm rainbow connecting them. Myers' skyscapes of brilliantly colored oils on wood are both spectacular and scientifically accurate. His clever use of reflections, the way he artfully plays with the book's gutter, and the almost tactile paint striations create spreads that are, well, heavenly. A lofty concept and radiant illustrations will leave readers on cloud nine.(Picture book. 4-10) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
