Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain

Product Information

In a quaint village nestled at the edge of a magical forest, lived a curious and imaginative little girl named Nini.

I remember seeing this book on Reading Rainbow performed by the one man who could make it authentic as it is from darkest Africa: Mr James Earl Jones, the Afro-American actor with THAT VOICE. I really like how the poem builds and unfortunately it didn't work too well when I read it with a nursery group but I'm sure KS1 or 2 groups would appreciate it much more. It begs to be read aloud with an audience joining in as they catch the rhythm and remember the repeated lines, and I love reading as a community activity.In fact, I ended up reading it aloud to myself and I’m looking forward to reading it to some children when I have the opportunity. BOOK: KADAI VEEDHI KALAKALALLUM/கடை வீதி கலகலக்கும் AUTHOR: RAMYA SETHURAM ILLUSTRATOR: BHAVYA DESAI PUBLISHER: AGAN ADHIGARAM PAGES: 22 AGE RECOMMENDED: 4+ My favourite author and publisher have released their third book, and I have the privilege of reviewing it again. Here was a book with gorgeous illustrations that I could read to my grandchildren and thus connect the past with the present with the future. I found that all the lines fell between 8 and 12 syllables, and that the pattern of stresses tended to be anapestic, two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed one. One of the things I did this summer was think about books I read to my own children when they were little, the ones they loved and wanted to hear over and over.

One can easily correlate the strength of the eagle with the strength that Ki-pat had in caring for his land. I think a perfectly consistent rhythm would have veered in the direction of boring and singsongy text, so it’s good to see the “rules” judiciously broken. It’s one thing to craft a really great story that hits the imagination of the moment and becomes a blockbuster, but it’s an entirely different sort of success to have a book stand the test of time. In this traditional tale, discovered in Kenya, a young herd boy Ki-pat must find a way to end the dreadful drought that has come to the beautiful Kapiti Plain and save the animals that live there.A prolific American children's author and teacher, Verna Norberg Aardema Vugteveen - more commonly known as Verna Aardema - was born in 1911 in New Era, Michigan. Ki- pat decided to make an arrow out of a feather that fell from an eagle and a bow out of a stick and a couple of other things. The second fairly obvious observation is that the format of the story, the cumulative or House-that-Jack-Built format, works well for this tale in which each thing is directly related to the next.

Beatriz Vidal's beautiful illustrations provide a charming accompaniment to the story, which would make an ideal story-hour selection.This is good for children who grew up in a wealthy industrialized society where clean water is available at the turn of the tap. K-pat, the herd boy, must find a way to end the drought and the suffering of the animals on the plain. It could also be integrated with social studies or science when learning about different ecosystems or weather.