The Big Sneeze ¦ Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain

Both these full size paperbacks use the same structure as the familiar 'The House that Jack Built', 'Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain was discovered in Kenya some seventy years ago by an anthropologist and Verna Aardema's version with its cumulative refrain and rhythm. ('This is the grass/all brown and dead/That needed the rain/from the cloud overhead - /The big, black cloud/all heavy with rain,/That shadowed the ground/on Kapiti Plain,') brings it closer to the English rhyme. This and the stylised illustration of men and animals extend children's imaginative experience to the less familiar African landscape.

In The Big Sneeze, a fly lands on a sleeping farmer's nose and atishoo chaos - chaos ensues, shattering the peace of the occupants of the barn. Here the structure is that of 'The House that Jack Built' but without the strong rhythm. There is strength though in the way the artist uses light to change and control the way the events are perceived.