The Mountain School

The Mountain School
Author: Greg Alder
Publisher: Greg Alder
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2013
Genre: History
ISBN: 0988682206

The Kingdom of Lesotho is a mountainous enclave in southern Africa, and like mountain zones throughout the world it is isolated, steeped in tradition, and home to few outsiders. The people, known as Basotho, are respected in the area as the only tribe never to be defeated by European colonizers. Greg Alder arrives in Tsoeneng in 2003 as the village's first foreign resident since 1966. Back then, the Canadian priest who had been living there was robbed and murdered in his quarters. Set up as a Peace Corps teacher at the village's secondary school, Alder finds himself incompetent in so many unexpected ways. How do you keep warm in this place where it snows but there is no electricity? How do you feed yourself where there are no grocery stores let alone restaurants? Tsoeneng is a world apart from his home in America, but Alder persists in adapting. He learns to grow food, he learns to speak the strange local language, and he makes enough friends such that he is eventually invited to participate in initiation rites. Yet even as he seems accepted into the Tsoeneng fold, he sees how much of an outsider he will always remain-and perhaps want to remain. The Mountain School is insightful and candid, at times accepting and at times rebellious. It is the ultimate tale of the transplant.

One Rainy Day

One Rainy Day
Author: M. Christina Butler
Publisher: Little Tiger Press
Total Pages: 18
Release: 2011
Genre: Board books
ISBN: 9781848952232

Pitter-pat! Pitter-patter, pitter pat!Little Hedgehog is delighted when he wakes up to find it is raining. At last he can try out his lovely new raincoat, hat and boots, and his sparkly umbrella. But soon the rain gets faster and the wind gets blowier and Little Hedgehog's rain day turns into a great big adventure!

The Half-God of Rainfall

The Half-God of Rainfall
Author: Inua Ellams
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
Total Pages: 62
Release: 2019-04-04
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 0008324786

From the award-winning poet and playwright behind Barber Shop Chronicles, The Half-God of Rainfall is an epic story and a lyrical exploration of pride, power and female revenge.

Essays

Essays
Author: Leigh Hunt
Publisher:
Total Pages: 166
Release: 1907
Genre:
ISBN:

On a Rainy Day

On a Rainy Day
Author: Sarah LuAnn Perkins
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 33
Release: 2022-03-29
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 0593405080

A sweet story of a father and daughter's cozy day together as they wait for a storm to pass When rain interrupts their outdoor play, a girl and her father retreat indoors to wait out the storm. As lightning cracks and thunder booms, they each have their own ideas of things they can do together on a rainy day. Told through spare text and bold sound effects, Sarah LuAnn Perkins' unique linocut-like textured illustrations create a fun read-aloud experience for both reader and listener.

Rain

Rain
Author: Cynthia Barnett
Publisher: Crown
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2016-04-05
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0804137110

Rain is elemental, mysterious, precious, destructive. It is the subject of countless poems and paintings; the top of the weather report; the source of the world's water. Yet this is the first book to tell the story of rain. Cynthia Barnett's Rain begins four billion years ago with the torrents that filled the oceans, and builds to the storms of climate change. It weaves together science—the true shape of a raindrop, the mysteries of frog and fish rains—with the human story of our ambition to control rain, from ancient rain dances to the 2,203 miles of levees that attempt to straitjacket the Mississippi River. It offers a glimpse of our "founding forecaster," Thomas Jefferson, who measured every drizzle long before modern meteorology. Two centuries later, rainy skies would help inspire Morrissey’s mopes and Kurt Cobain’s grunge. Rain is also a travelogue, taking readers to Scotland to tell the surprising story of the mackintosh raincoat, and to India, where villagers extract the scent of rain from the monsoon-drenched earth and turn it into perfume. Now, after thousands of years spent praying for rain or worshiping it; burning witches at the stake to stop rain or sacrificing small children to bring it; mocking rain with irrigated agriculture and cities built in floodplains; even trying to blast rain out of the sky with mortars meant for war, humanity has finally managed to change the rain. Only not in ways we intended. As climate change upends rainfall patterns and unleashes increasingly severe storms and drought, Barnett shows rain to be a unifying force in a fractured world. Too much and not nearly enough, rain is a conversation we share, and this is a book for everyone who has ever experienced it.