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Illustrated by Fabricio VandenBroack
Charlesbridge Publishing, 2001
$15.95 hardcover
32 pages

At night Carlos listens to his uncle Tomás tell stories, in Spanish, of the people and gods of long-ago Mexico. Tío Tomás calls them "tongue-twister gods" because the names are so long, and he and Carlos make a game of saying them faster and faster until they laugh.

But by day Tío Tomás struggles with English. In the grocery store, at the school conference with Carlos's teacher, Carlos must translate everything into Spanish. This makes Tío Tomás so angry that Carlos privately calls him Uncle Rain Cloud.

Carlos just hopes that Tío Tomás will not always be Uncle Rain Cloud.

Uncle Rain Cloud could be easily labeled as a touching picture book about two people coming to terms with the differences between their old and new cultures. But there is a lot more to it than that. Uncle Rain Cloud is also the story of Carlos and his uncle learning to find common ground with each other, but not, I think, quite the way author Tony Johnston intended. The revelation that Tío Tomás's fear of English is the root of his anger is, in fact, no revelation at all; Carlos already knew this. The important thing is that Tomás finally admits it to himself and to Carlos. At the same time, the attempt at symmetry, claiming that Carlos has the same problems with English as his uncle, fails because we readers never see Carlos having difficulty. Indeed, Carlos seems to be doing very well; he translates for Tomás and makes jokes with his teacher with an air of confidence.

The common ground Johnston so warmly, if unwittingly, explores is humor. Carlos calls Tomás "Uncle Rain Cloud," and bows to the corn in the market: these are the private jokes a person tells only to himself, or can share with a rare few. And in the end, Carlos and Tío Tomás are able to share their private jokes, and they both bow to the corn in the market. It's a significant accomplishment in itself.

Reviewed by Wendy Morris. © 2001 by Wendy Morris

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