While thunder rumbles outside, Little Girl’s mother sings: “It’s raining, it’s pouring,/ The Old Man is snoring,/ He went to bed with a cold in his head,/ And he didn’t get up in the morning.” Little Girl climbs an imaginary ladder to the clouds and discovers the sniffling giant Old Man, who has no mom to make him feel better. Back down the ladder, then up again Little Girl climbs, this time hauling a warm drink in a wheelbarrow for the grateful giant, who sends her safely home on a sunbeam.

With a spunky heroine, a dangerous quest, and a comforting lifeline to home, most children would consider this an ideal fantasy. Author/storyteller Andrea Spalding (Sarah May and the Red Dress) uses personification, onomatopoeic diction, and sentences filled with cumulative actions to make this story perfect for performance, as well as great fun to read aloud: “The thunder muttered and the ladder shivered. She clung with her fingers and clutched with her arms and gripped with her teeth and braced with her feet.”

Illustrator Leslie Elizabeth Watts (Princess Stinky Toes and the Brave Frog Robert) creates a reassuring environment for Little Girl, and subsequently for young readers. Little Girl’s smiling parents play along with her fantasy. Old Man is endearingly grandpa-like, his bedmate a teddy bear. Watts invents a supporting cast of cuddly animals to escort Little Girl on her quest. Whimsy abounds: a bat rides on a cat’s tail, a duck swims in the giant’s drink, and a delightful transformation occurs to two of the animals when imagination settles back into reality.