Rain Player

Product Information

This would help his challenge with the God to pok-a-tok and if he wins there will be no more drought. Although it doesn't explore the full aspect of Mayan life and what it may have been like the reader is introduced to one of the sports they participate in, the famous calendar, one of the Gods, special animals and even some details such as clothing.

This time the setting is Mayan; the protagonist is Pik, a boy who challenges his culture's fatalism in a ballplaying competition with Chac, the rain god, thus bringing relief to his drought-stricken village. In 1980, they started the Clarion Puppet Theatre (later known as the Clarion Shadow Theatre) which toured in schools, theaters and at the Smithsonian.

It is truly astounding how much life and movement and expression and action and detail the author archived with an exacto knife and construction paper.

Pik is a brave Maya boy and tries to save his civilisation from being engulfed in a year of drought. One of my favorite Incubus songs, "Wish You Were Here", has a lovely lyric that goes "The ocean looks like a thousand diamonds / strewn across a blue blanket" - and this book really reminds me of that. the text wasn't to impressive but i might crack this book open again some day if i see it and look at the illustrations because they were the best part of the book.

Really young children who are susceptible to nightmares may be better steered away from the book until they are older and better able to take it into concept since the artwork can be truly scary-like. At the end of the book he included a notes page that discussed the actual event or tradition or practice of the people that he incorporated into a story.

Although not fully giving the reader a true sense of Mayan identity it is a good stepping stone for those who may be interested or those who need a bit of a cultural change in their reading no matter what their age may be.Thankfully, he hits it off with fellow new student, “punk rock”–looking Uchenna Devereaux, a black girl with twists (though they actually look like dreads in Aly’s illustrations). Readers follow him on his quest in Malden, Virginia, where he finds inspiration in a man ``brown as me'' reading a newspaper on a street corner.