"That day, with my nails still full of dirt I swore to myself I'd never bury anything that deep again. But that was ten years ago, when my parents laughed and talked to each other in normal tones.
When we were a family of four. Before that night."
Change is hard. Don't be sorry.
Be something great while you are still so young.
Counting is what I do when I want to erase my brain ...
The events of 'that night' are presented in this story as alternate and flashback chapters. As a reader you gradually work out something truly terrible has happened 350 days ago and now the family are moving from Vermont to New York City where mum has a new job. Every mention of Rain's brother Guthrie is in the past tense. His room has been shut tight for 350 days. Dad has retreated to the bedroom.
"His hair is sticking up on one side, his beard is grayer and scruffier and longer than I've ever seen it, and his flannel shirt is off by a button."
Rain has to leave behind her home, her room and her very best friend. She may also have lost the chance to compete as a runner and she is so fast she could have been the winner.
"One in four. That's the same odds as marriages that survive the death of a child."
Their new home is a tiny apartment and right from the start Rain knows someone else lived there - a girl who was Frankie's best friend. How can there possibly be a way Rain and Frankie can ever be friends. And the new school is huge and loud and:
"Students need to complete twenty-five hours of community service before June eighteenth to be promoted to seventh grade."
The teacher does reduce the requirement to ten hours but this still means Rain has only eighteen days to complete this assignment. Luckily, she does make friends with Frankie and also with a quiet, but very kind girl in her class, named Amelia. Rain and her mum volunteer to make lunches at a local church and this gives Rain a first-hand experience of homelessness. And there is a wonderful neighborhood center near their homes and the three girls go there as volunteers. The owner Ms Dacie is a very special lady who provides safety and kindness for everyone, but her lease is about to expire and there is no money to keep her center open.
Ms Dacie's place has a large overgrown garden off to the side. Before everything changed Rain's dad was a very keen and very successful gardener. Rain puts these ideas together and she comes up with a wonderful way to involve the community, help her dad (and Mum) and save Ms Dacie's safe space. Meanwhile the class teacher has set a poetry assignment (which made me link this book to Ode to a Nobody). And of course Frankie, Rain and Amelia are competing in the relay at the track meet against kids in Grade eight - the are only in Grade six.
Right as Rain has very heavy themes but it is all told with a lightness of touch and small moments of sweet humour such as when Rain uses forbidden words (damn, shut-up, and stupid) and when she eats wonderful new Mexican foods in her neighborhood and drinks the world's most delicious hot chocolate. There are also truly special moments of kindness in this story and also emotional intelligence.
You might also like to read or reread The One and Only Ivan; Bridge to Terabithia and The Crossover (Kwame Alexander) before dipping into Right As Rain as these are the library books that Rain is reading through her first weeks at this new school.
Poem 4
363 days gone
1 Christmas
4 gardening seasons
3 report cards
55 ski runs
51 Friday family dinners
3 pairs of worn-out sneakers that have run through, run away, run to erase
the length of 130,680 songs that I've counted in my head,
wondering,
if maybe you could just still be there, at the concert
listening.
The number of our memories together between now and the dirt is
a big who-knows.
But I won't let those sneak off and out.
And if they try, I promise. Promise. I'll say no stay.
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