Customer Reviews

Rain School

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Thomas, a young child in the African country of Chad, eagerly anticipates his first day of school. When he arrives at the schoolyard, Thomas is surprised to see a teacher but no building and no desks. He discovers that before the reading instruction can begin, he needs to help make mud bricks, build walls, and thatch a roof. When the school term ends nine months later, Thomas has learned a great deal. That knowledge will stay with him, even though not much will remain of the mud building once the rainy season has passed its course.

With its exuberant illustrations and graceful text, this book introduces readers to how young children living in remote parts of Chad, one of the poorest countries in the world, may experience primary school. The author draws on his Peace Corps experience in Chad to add realism and to convey the desire of children to overcome the obstacles they face and become educated.

Imagine spending your first days of school helping building the place you will be learning in. Imagine knowing it will all be washed away when the rains come nine months later. This is the reality of the children in the mud school of a village in Chad. But regardless of what happens to impermanent things, knowledge cannot be taken away.

This book left me awe-struck. It has never occurred to me that kids somewhere might have this sort of experience. My daughter also enjoyed the book, with its crisp prose and warm illustrations and unspoken lessons. There are so many ways to go with this book: a look at different cultures, poverty, seasonal changes and/or taking things for granted. I recommend RAIN SCHOOL highly.

We love this book. It is our current favorite, and as it goes in our house, that means we read it perhaps three times per day. I had a slightly different take than the two previous reviewers. I won't recap the plot, since that's been done well above. It makes me think, not of how little others have (though I recognize this is true in many places) but of how bizarre and sometimes pointless, or at least incomplete, the standard Western education is. How fabulous to learn not only reading and writing at school, but also carpentry and masonry. I guess I don't think of this as a story about poverty, but about opportunity.

It's the first day of school. A group of children are walking to school, excited about the start of classes. They walk and walk and finally they arrive. There are no books. There are no desks. There is no school building. The teacher is there. `'We will build our school," she says. "This is the first lesson."'

What a moment. `"We will build our school," she says. "This is the first lesson."

The children live in the African county of Chad. The children have an excitement about learning that I don't see every day in my work in the schools in America. I feel the power of that excitement in these pages. It enables a group of children, led by a teacher, to build a place each year, from scratch, in which children can learn, knowing that, at the end of the school year, rains will come and the whole building and everything in it will be washed away by the heavy rain.

A moving story. Very powerful.