What Makes a Rainbow?

My son actually ate some of his breakfast this morning and wanted to play his new video game afterward as he still had a little bit of time before having to leave for school. I didn’t want to start setting the precedent of playing video games first thing in the morning as I could just see him getting up earlier and earlier to play. Instead, I suggested that he could bring a book to the kitchen and we could read together while he had a few more bites of his bacon.

He brought “What Makes a Rainbow?” which is a book he’s had since he was a baby. I’m not sure what made him pick that one out this morning as it is far below the reading level he is at now, and he hadn’t read it in ages.

The very simple story begins with Little Rabbit and his mother observing that it stopped raining. “Soon we’ll see a rainbow,” says Mama Rabbit. Little Rabbit is curious as to what makes a rainbow. Mama tells him to ask his friends. On each of the subsequent pages, he asks a different friend. Bluebird tells him that you need blue to make a rainbow; Ladybug tells him you need red.

At the end, he learns that you need rain, colors, and sunshine to make a rainbow.

In life, when it is metaphorically “raining,” it is sometimes hard to see that it will lead to a rainbow. So it is in our household right now. Perhaps we need friends to tell us the colors that we need to make a rainbow. Or, perhaps, we just need to be patient for the sun to come out.

I know that it eventually will.