The expressive faces of Victor and Joey capture the mood of each scene, typifying Gay's perceptive ability to portray the dynamic nature of children's imagination and fantasy. Movement is the founding element of Marie-Louise Gay's illustrations in Rainy Day Magic . As Victor and Joey crawl across the blue and purple landscape, they find themselves on the back of a tiger and a violent sneeze launches the pair on to a snake slithering over a two-page spread. Each scene shows the children in mid action, their unfinished movements providing the reader with an idea of possible movement, making the illustrations of this book like single cells of animation. Gay's skill provides all the visual details for the reader.
Every page is filled with movement, which spills out of the frames and right off the pages.
Borders and frames are like rules which were made to be broken. Headache prone fathers or gloomy basements cannot restrain Joey and Victor's enthusiasm, in the same way that the page cannot contain these pictures. Marie-Louise Gay's illustrations take on a life that cannot be bound by arbitrary frame sizes and page lengths. Delightfully bright coloured fish swim into the picture from off of the page and a two-page spread is simply not big enough to contain Gay's majestic tiger. When the pair are swallowed by a whale, the action stops and the basement goes dark.