After It Rains: A Counting Book

After It Rains is a learn-to-count board book, one that uses observations of what happens after the rain stops falling as its content. Life is seen to be started anew as children leave their houses to play in their latest backyard puddle while insects and other creatures emerge from the places that have sheltered them during the rainfall.

Each of the numbers from 1 (ONE) to 10 (TEN) is treated on a pair of facing pages with one page carrying Schwartz’ brief text that incorporates strong action words like “peek” and “wriggle” while the other features Doak’s collage illustrations that make good use of white space to facilitate toddlers being able to count the pages’ target objects.

Though After It Rains’s principal purpose is to assist youngsters in learning to count from one to ten, children will also add to their vocabulary store and perhaps may meet butterflies (4), snails (5), sparrows (6), the colours of the rainbow (7) flowers (8) and worms (9) for the first time. The numbers “ONE big puddle”, “TWO friends” and “THREE paper boats” do tell a small wordless story, one that is echoed in the final number as “We jump in the puddle TEN times...SPLASH!” The closing text is numberless as “there are too many raindrops to count.” Doak’s final illustration incorporates many of the elements found in her previous 10 collages.

After It Rains is an excellent home purchase, and it definitely has a place in libraries serving this age group. Perhaps after reading the book to their children, parents could consider creating paper boats for bathtub time and link literature and life.