Lila and the Secret of Rain by David Conway, illustrated by Jude Daly (Frances Lincoln, distributed by PGW, $16.95, 9781845074074/1845074076, 28 pp., ages 4-8, April)
On the opening spread of this gracefully nuanced book, a giant sun dominates a pale blue and yellow landscape of dry earth, bare trees and a handful of modest tents huddled together. "For weeks and weeks the sun beat down on the Kenyan village where Lila lived." Young Lila, as tall as her firewood bundle, her red outfit offering the illustration's only splash of color, rests against a mound of dry earth, and three panel illustrations demonstrate the relentless beating of the sun: "It was too hot to gather firewood, too hot to weed the village garden, and even too hot to milk the cow." When the heroine's grandfather tells her a tale he heard as a boy that confides the secret of rain ("You must climb the highest mountain . . . and tell the sky the saddest thing you know"), off the girl goes to save her village. Conway (Loose Change) wastes no words as he describes both Lila's internal journey and her hike to the mountaintop. At first, she describes the sad things she knows as the things to which all children can relate (a cut on her brother's leg, burning her fingers while cooking). But when she tells the sky about the fate of her village, the earth seems to stop. Artist Daly's (The Elephant's Pillow) quietly escalating drama comes to a pregnant pause. The sun hangs suspended above the mountaintop, as if Lila could stand up and touch its scorching heat ("Everything on the mountaintop was silent. Nothing could be heard except the sound of Lila weeping"). Through the elegant pacing of words and pictures, we watch the clouds move in, then grow "darker and darker, filling with Lila's sadness . . . until the sky was ebony with emotion." Upon her return, as the village celebrates, only Lila and her grandfather share "a knowing smile." In its elegantly understated way, this book gets to the heart of the ongoing struggle of man against nature, and the power of one child's belief that she can make a difference.--Jennifer M. Brown
