1. Animals
2. Art motifs
3. Bilingual books
4. Landscapes
5. Literacy
6. Literary devices
7. Nature
8. Readers
9. Visual literacy

‘Summer Rain’ excels in its choice of less than 80-words. These offer rich, yet simple words (and so many verbs!) with strong visual imagery. The use of rhythm, alliteration, and rhyme provide a natural language flow.

‘Summer Rain’ is a picture book capturing northern Australia during the wet season and bringing the unique landscape alive through bursts of colour featuring Indigenous artwork. Here is a day where the reader experiences the awakening of the land then travels across landscapes with various animals until dusk and night descends. Attentive viewers will notice that as the day progresses, colours and texture subtly change.

The varied cast of Australian animals carry the reader along wondering what animals will appear next and how the words will capture their essence. While the text is very simple, it is lyrical, for example, ‘’turtles crawl and lizards leap’, a ‘snake sheds its winter skin’ and ‘brolgas strut as daylight fades’. On the last double page spread, the entire story appears in the Yanyuwa language of the Borroloola people.

The artwork is produced by the Balarinji Studio, an Aboriginal-owned strategy and design agency which states that is founded on ‘authentic engagement with Aboriginal people, culture, art, stories and identity’. This book is part of a collection of books by Ros Moriarty in her Indi Kindi early learning and literacy program designed to promote early literacy.

1. Moriarty Foundation. Indi kindi https://www.moriartyfoundation.org.au/programs/indi-kindi/
2. Meet Ros Moriarty. Reading Time, 22 July 2015 http://readingtime.com.au/meet-ros-moriarty/
3. Borroloola. The Sydney Morning Herald, 8 February 2004 https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/borroloola-20040208-gdkqay.html
4. Review of ‘Summer Rain’. Kids’ Book Review, 18 February 2017 http://www.kids-bookreview.com/2017/02/review-summer-rain.html
5. Review by Claire Saxby of ‘Summer Rain’. Aussie Reviews, 6 January 2016 http://aussiereviews.com/2016/01/summer-rain-by-ros-moriarty-ill-balarinji/
6. 100 Stories before School. Book Review: ‘Splosh for the Billabong’ and ‘Summer Rain’, 25 September 2015 http://100storiesbeforeschool.com/book-review-splosh-for-the-billabong-and-summer-rain-aboriginal-theme/