Shower Happening! Tap Tap Boom Boom by Elizabeth Bluemle

TAP TAP
DARK CLOUDS.

Two boys, heading for the park, notice a few drops of cold rain. They watch a dad hustle his daughter, a girl their age in a bright yellow dress, down the stairs to the subway.

TAP TAP TAP TAP
BOOM BOOM BOOM!

Umbrellas bloom and gutters gurgle as the rain ruins the boys' playday plans. Suddenly, everyone seems to scurrying in the same direction.

FEET WETTER?
YOU'D BETTER
GO DOWN
UNDERGROUND
WHERE THE WATER
CAN'T GETCHA.
YOU BETCHA!

Everyone around them streams down the subway stairs to escape the storm.

Thunder boomer! It's a bummer!

But, it's not. The little group of rainstorm refugees wait, and a couple of dogs take the opportunity to shake themselves dry, sending drops all over. The little crowd laugh at themselves, windblown and rain-spattered, and smile at each other as they huddle together in their ad hoc haven.

There's a girl in fancy dance costume on her way to class, a tall lady with a gussied-up poodle, all kinds of people, on their own little island for a moment. One guy passes around slices of his pizza to all takers. It's really a bit cozy down there, safe from the storm, where the thunder seems far away.

FEET WETTER.
SOME WEATHER!
WET SIGHS.
SMILES WIDE,
TOGETHER IS BETTER.

But it's only a summer sun-shower, and as the tap tap taps above slow, the boys race upstairs where they find some giant sidewalk puddles reflecting the skyscrapers and sky to shatter as they bounce their basketball in them and splash each other. Then they spot a rainbow shining in the clearing sky over the city.

NOW PEOPLE SCATTER,
THROUGH PUDDLE SPLATTER.
WE WAVE GOODBYE!
"SO LONG! KEEP DRY!"

Author Elizabeth Bluemle and artist G. Brian Karas capture a rare moment of impromptu community in the big city in their Tap Tap Boom Boom (Candlewick Press, 2014) as a sudden shower brings a group of strangers together. Kids, dogs, shoppers, workers, and errand do-ers share shelter and forget their destinations for a moment. Bleumle's impetuous urban rhythms and playful rhymes set the mood, and G. Brian Karas' illustrations capture the scene with a combination of photo-collaged city settings set against his overlay of art, with his witty portrayals of busy city people stopped in their soppy tracks by the rainstorm.

This book achieves a special mood set by the perfect combination of text, text design, and art that is both humorous and warm, a moment foreshadowed by Karas' frontispiece, a giant raindrop in which the cityscape is reflected. This is a wonderful picture book with plenty in the pictures for readers to discover and a lively refrain--TAP TAP BOOM BOOM--to join, one which leaves the reader with a different feeling about city folk and thunderstorms.  "...magical," says the New York Times, "the kind of interruption in routine that might loom large in a small child's eyes and is rendered evocatively here."

Shaggy Dog Story: The Deep Deep Puddle by Mary Jessie Parker

THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT AND THE EARLY MORNING, THE RAIN FELL.

A PUDDLE...
A DEEP, DEEP PUDDLE SWELLS AND STRETCHES ACROSS THE CITY  STREET.

ONE SHAGGY DOG, SOGGY FROM THE RAIN,
WANDERS AND SNEEZES A LITTLE TOO CLOSE TO THE EDGE OF DEEP DEEP PUDDLE....

AND GLUB, GLUB, GLUB.... 

As the already waterlogged pooch sinks deeper and deeper, two curious stray cats approach to peer into the puddle, and...

You guessed it! Glub times two and the felines join the dog, sinking into the deep.

These three are soon joined by three thirsty squirrels, four pecking pigeons, and five schoolkids running to beat the late bell.  All sink together into the amazing puddle's depths.

Six tourists, tangled in their camera straps, stumble and trip into the watery wasteland, followed in turn by seven yellow taxis, and eight street vendors, with their pushcarts, vans, and tinkling ice cream trucks, take the plunge.  Next nine robbers on the lam with their bags of loot, looking backward for pursuers, step right into the puddle.  Down, down they sink,, greenbacks floating away from their grasping hands.  The tourists try to snap photos with their phones or cameras of the action, while the vendors reach to retrieve their floating wares, the dog dog-paddles after the squirrels and the cats do their best swimming strokes in pursuit of the pigeons.  It's a big muddle of a  puddle!

At last ten police, tracking the robbers, arrive to cordon off the puddle and eleven tank trucks arrive to drain the puddle with their twelve long suction hoses.  Away goes the water, and the police collar the malefactors, the vendors rearrange their wares, the tourists smooth their hairdos and straighten  their damp clothes, looking a bit foolish for themselves, while the cats, pigeons, and squirrels hurry to leave the scene of their dunking.  All's well that ends well, right?

Well, there's still that soaking-wet, soggy, shaggy dog.  And you know just what dogs do when they're wet....!

Mary Jessica Parker takes puddle jumping to new, er, depths in her new deluge dilemma, The Deep Deep Puddle (Dial Books, 2013).  There are plenty of Glub, Glub, Glubs  to go around in this unique counting book with an unsuspected but satisfying ending, but artist Deborah Zemke's clever and comic illustrations of a passel of city dwellers taking the plunge really take the puddle prize.  There is plenty of humorous action in that puddle for dedicated detail spotters in this silly and fantastical city story.