Rainy Day by Patricia Lakin

I absolutely adored this book. The characters are 4 crocodiles that are named Sam, Pam, Will and Jill. Right from the start, the author puts in a good rhyme schema. This is great for emerging readers because so many of the words rhyme and are very simple. A lot of the phrases are repeated and changed just a little by each of the crocodiles. This makes it easy for a reader to be confident in his/her reading and guess a word that is unfamiliar. When a word needs to be emphasized, the author puts it in all caps or bold in order to get the reader's attention. It is so great because it describes all the different things that these four friends try to do on a rainy day instead of laying around inside. Everything that occurs is so crazy and unexpected. When they are driving in the rain, they end up in the clouds and then they see a pirate ship, a whale and a monster. At this point, the reader could be asked to make predictions about what they think will happen next. I expected the book to continue in this scary, mystery place. However, as I turned the page, I found that the place really wasn't scary at all. The monster, whale and pirate ship were actually just parts of a miniature golf course. They then see a creature that looks like a monster but turns out to be a friendly dog with a baseball in his mouth. I like how the dialogue is separated in order to place each phrase next to the crocodile that is doing the talking. This helps the reader to know who is saying what at all times. Next, while playing baseball, what the crocodiles think are falling baseballs, becomes hail. They decide to follow the dog and he leads them to the library. This is another really unexpected occurrence. It is a great wrap-up at the end, that each crocodile is reading a book about one of the activities that they did in the rain. It is also helpful that the author ends the pattern of the book by stating each crocodile's name one last time.