This moving story by multiple-award winning author and illustrator Bryan Collier is about a young boy and how he finds joy in the face of life’s storms. Collier said in an Author’s Note that it was inspired by the life of Quincy Jones, the Robert Frost poem “The Road Not Taken,” and the artist Maya Angelou.

The young African American boy in the story adores his father, but his father is away a lot, off working. He also loves his mother, but she falls ill, and “has to go away for a while.” [When Quincy Jones was young, his mother had a schizophrenic breakdown and was sent to a mental institution.] In the book, the boy’s father would often say to him:

“Son, life is full of holes. You may want to close them up to keep out the storm. But make sure to leave room for that rainbow to find you. Broken is beautiful.”

The boy felt so alone, and the friends he made got him into trouble. But on occasions when the boy heard music, it appeared like the colors of the rainbow to him, and allowed him to relax, and to dream:

“And the music was love. Love like Daddy’s hugs and Momma’s kisses on his forehead.”

One day, when he and his trouble-making friends broke into the rec center, he found a room with a piano. He started to play, and the ability to relax and dream came back to him. And he remembered what his father told him about looking for a rainbow in the dark spaces. He could go the rec center and play whenever he needed to find peace and happiness.

Collier concludes with: “The rainbow had found him. And then that feeling lasted forever.” He adds: “Even if a story starts out so sad that you’ll want to cry a river wetter than tears, God always puts a rainbow in the clouds.”

Collier's artwork was done using watercolors and collage on canvas.

Evaluation: As usual, Collier’s rich illustrations add volumes to the written text through the facial expressions and movement of the characters, with music always shown as a rainbow. Readers aged 5 and over will see that loneliness and negative peer pressure can be overcome by finding an inner light and making choices that illuminate it. ( )