And Then it Rained on Malcolm, needs more sunshine

And Then it Rained on Malcolm is about a young boy who wants to play, but it’s raining. It rains on him within the first four pages, so if you’re thinking that the title of the book leads up to a grand finale, it doesn’t. If anything, that’s what makes And Then it Rained on Malcolm so frustrating. The illustrations in the book are huge, taking up every square inch in this already massive book-this is one of the great qualifiers for an entertaining children’s book.

Once it rains on Malcolm he finds some worms to play with, his dog enters the fun and they roll around outside. After a while he goes inside where he makes a mess on the floor, takes a bath and his mother makes him clean it all up.

The description of the book inside its liner notes has almost as many words as the entire book. It’s not that a children’s book has to be wordy, we are big fans of wordless or picture books and will continue to love them long after our children grown up.

We’ll call it a semi-wordless book, but even then there isn’t enough happening to capture our attention. Our children liked the illustrations and how Malcolm played, got dirty and had worms in the bathtub. Normally with low-word books we’ll make up our own story, talk about the art and pretend that a second story is happening within the book. With And Then it Rained on Malcolm we couldn’t do that due to the nature of the illustrations.

Because they’re big they monopolize the page, which can be a good thing, but the art doesn’t have enough going on in the background for us to stretch out the book. It’s a bummer because this is a really big book and has lots of opportunities to love it, but falls short with its too simple of a story.