The Day the Rain Moved In
The Day the Rain Moved In
It’s raining in every room in the house.
There’s a puddle in the living room that grows a bit bigger each day.
There’s been no storm, no clouds. The rain has simply moved into the house. No one invited it in.
In Éléonore Douspis’ The Day the Rain Moved In
The children can’t believe their eyes. They have never seen anything like this!
The table has become an island, the staircase a dock, the cat’s bed a canoe.
Together they explore this unlikely new playground.
The tree then grows enough to pierce through the roof and sunlight enters the house. The rain stops.
Douspis’ text, which is translated from French, is short and poetic. The rain is possibly a metaphor for grief or sadness. Life grows from the rain, and, when you let people and the light in, the rain stops. However, the text feels like it needs more storyline to make the metaphor of rain more meaningful to young readers. Many young readers will likely take the plot as an odd story rather than a life metaphor. My nine-year-old said, “It’s really strange. Why is there a tree in the house?”
The illustrations are a highlight of the book. Douspis uses gray with pops of colour effectively to demonstrate the progression of the darkness of the rain to the vibrancy of colours and life at the end of the book. The cover of the book has beautiful rain drops that are only visible when the book is at certain angles or when the light shines on the cover just so.
The Day the Rain Moved In would be suitable for ages 5 to 10 with discussion and scaffolding from parents or teachers about what the rain may mean. The Day the Rain Moved In may be particularly useful for teachers when teaching about metaphor and interpretation of texts.
Dr. Kristen Ferguson teaches literacy education at the Schulich School of Education at Nipissing University in North Bay, Ontario.