April Showers Bring... Split! Splat! by Amy Gibson

I SING A LITTLE RAIN SONG,
A SIMPLE SONG, A PLAIN SONG.
A PITTER-PATTER-TIP-TAP
ON THE WINDOWPANE SONG.

April showers bring... raindrops, rain puddles, muddy puddles...and mudpies.

Spring is here, and our little girl sees her friends outside in bright yellow slickers and with red umbrellas,playing in the rain, and she just has to get on her gear and get out there, too. It's sopping, splashy, squooshy, and splooshy out there, and soon the frolicking kids kick off their rainboots, and slip out of their slickers and let the raindrops split on the tops of their heads to run down their faces, into their open mouths, and drizzle down to their toes, which are soon mucketing and splucketing in the puddles.

From splashing in puddles to puddling in muddles, the kids soon get down and dirty in the mud and then it's mudpies all around for the wet set. And when the clouds roll away and the sun returns, rain fun is done for today, and it's time to trade those mud puddles for tubs of suds, leaving an unfortunate trail of earthy tracks all the the way to the waiting bath.

Amy Gibson's text is filled with both well-known and freshly created onomatopoetic words that, despite their tongue-teasing qualities, flow lightly and smoothly through this simple story like raindrops down a windowpane. Artist Steve Bjorkman provides the freewheeling, kinetically colored illustrations of kids and dog having altogether as much fun as possible as they run through the warm raindrops. Gibson and Bjorkman offer their just published Split! Splat! (Scholastic, 2012) just in time for an April shower story hour.