title: It Rained on the Desert Today (Reading Rainbow Book)
author: Rising Moon Editors
description: The drama of seasonal change quickens a girl's first-person account of the first summer rain in the Southwestern desert. The narrator's elation at the storm expands in Tracy's satisfying visual studies of the responses of animals, people and sun-scorched landscape. Startling if occasionally forced perspectives evoke the grandeur of the storm and its power to renew life in seemingly barren surroundings. In one charming sequence, toddlers romp in the downpour until "they look like mud babies born from the earth herself." The furious rain dwindles to a rainbow, then cedes to a fiery, quiescent sunset. There is, however, a ragged quality about the book. Small motifs amplifying the narrative and appearing opposite full-page illustrations seem superfluous, and the text sometimes distracts by pulling readers into a perception of rhythm only to push them into prose. Ages 4-up. <BR>Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
zlib_text: 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  DESOLATION CROSSING
  
  
  
  
  
  by James Axler
  
  
  WORLDWIDE LIBRARY
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Chapter One
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter One
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  “A hard rain’s going to fall,” Doc muttered gnomically from the rear of the
  wag.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Mildred looked at him, also hard. The reference was lost on the others; but
  she, of an earlier age than them, wondered if some memory had once more
  filtered through Doc’s labyrinthine and fogged mind.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Jak looked up at the clear sky above them and sniffed. “No rain. Not for too
  long…”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The sky was azure, the sun burning red-yellow as it passed its peak and they
  entered the afternoon. The heat seemed to bounce off the ground around them
  and radiate back up, meeting itself so that it created a haze of shimmering
  air that held them tight. The land surrounding the wag on all sides was barren
  for as far as they could see, a chiaroscuro of browns that disappeared into
  the false horizon of the heat haze. It was dotted here and there by patches of
  stark cacti, risin