Thank you to Flying Eye Books for this lovely book. We love to receive beautiful books in the post. The lovely Mrs Mac has written this review for you – enjoy!

A lovely book! I love the illustrations; the fact that there are varied faces with differing skin tones. The characters in the backgrounds, diverse and lovely! The raincloud view of the town square is edged with different types of buildings and Ivy, alone in the centre, cuts a rather tragic figure.

Raincloud thinks Ivy looks so cross because, like him, she needs a friend. He follows her home to a rather bedraggled florist’s shop. He watches her some more and astutely thinks, ‘ Being grumpy is just another way of being sad.’

On the next page, there is a picture on the wall in her home of Ivy, with two people either side of her, who I presume are her parents. Alongside this is a 1st place certificate. There’s also a picture of Ivy beaming out from what looks like a prosperous version of her flower shop. All this leads the reader believe that Ivy wasn’t always sad and lonely. Maybe her parents had nurtured her love of, and success with, plants and helped her open the shop? And now they were gone. Maybe this was the reason for her sadness and isolation.

Raincloud helps her by doing what he does best, watering her failing flowers and plants. When she sees the transformation of the withered flora, she gives him a hug and they go on to make Ivy’s business thrive again.

I love the premise of this story. The Raincloud starts by being mad at the sun ( who we all adore!) for chasing his friends away. Not to be out done he goes off to find a friend. And here I think is the story’s strength: sometimes people think they don’t want or need anyone as a friend but we aren’t designed, on the whole, to be solitary and Raincloud pushes on through to help Ivy in the only way he can think of.

Clever, simple & gorgeous book.