Rumble Grumble . . . Hush

January 1, 2018
The brown-haired, light-skinned boy in this poem by Banks (How to Find an Elephant) has a parent who understands that shifting from raucous play to naptime isn’t easy. To help, the mother gives her child a bag of quiet-time amusements: “He makes a puzzle/ and etches lines/ and cuts and pastes a bright design.” Lulled into sleep, the boy naps on his bedroom floor before waking and taking up noisy play again. Banks’s joyous verse captures the accompanying cacophony: “Rat-a-tat, toot! Cling-clang!/ A monkey drums and fiddles like a one-man band.” In polished, silkscreen-like images with crisp contours, Shin (Bumpety, Dunkety, Thumpety-Thump!) makes a toy dragon, bear, rabbit, monkey, and dump truck grow into life-size creations of the boy’s imagination before they shrink and turn back into toys. The muted palette is dominated by slate blue and rusts, noise words surprise and excite, and quiet is represented throughout by a stream of delicate particles. There’s enough detail on each page to divert even the most vigorous noisemaker. Ages 3–7. Author’s agent: Rick Margolis, Rising Bear Literary. Illustrator’s agent: Kelly Sonnack, Andrea Brown Literary.

December 15, 2017
"Noisy" has finally met its match. This gentle tale makes "quiet" seem quite enticing. The day begins for a dark-haired, light-skinned boy with plenty of noisy, onomatopoeic fun. The "CLITTER-CLATTER" of the toy box and the "loud BOW-WOW!" of a pup are wonderful to begin with, and there's even more fun to be had when an imaginary dragon, bear, rabbit, and monkey provide their own sound effects. Then, "suddenly," the boy's mother, who resembles her son, leads him inside for quiet time. "The quiet drifts in on a current of air / and settles in a tiny chair / and makes itself at home." The boy forgets to keep the noise down and is shushed lovingly before opening his "quiet bag" wide, finding such gentle amusements as a puzzle, crafts, and books. In time it's OK to be boisterous once more. The book deftly introduces the concept of balancing rambunctious play with peaceful fun, providing a model for introducing the latter into a home. Shin's gentle and sophisticated mix of acrylic paint and digital media cleverly renders the quiet a visual experience by picturing it as a series of dots that circle and swirl in a clear attempt to soothe. Even readers accustomed to regular quiet times may wonder at the abrupt shift from noisy play to quiet, however.An equal assortment of silent play opportunities and imagination makes the concept of quiet very cool indeed. (Picture book. 3-6)

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March 1, 2018

PreS-K-A young boy and his dog play imaginative games with a collections of toys that come to life as a full size dragon, monkey, and bear. They enjoy both playing loudly and quietly over the course of a single day. They roar and dance as well as draw and read, whiling away their time from morning till bedtime. While adorably illustrated, the text in this book reads inconsistently and lacks flow. The awkward transition from loud play, which lasts only a few pages, to quiet play which continues for much of the book is disappointing. The emphasis on sounds is dropped around the same time as quiet play begins, and is only subtly picked up again with sounds like "shhh" and "purrr." VERDICT For books that do a great job incorporating sounds with a cohesive story try Squeak! Rumble! Whomp! Whomp! Whomp! by Wynton Marsalis or I Got the Rhythm by Connie Schofield-Morrison. An additional purchase.-Shana Shea, Windsor Public Library, CT

Copyright 2018 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2018
Preschool-G This book showcases sounds, both real and imagined, that surround a young boy throughout a day at home. As the day progresses, tiny, mundane noises, like adult chatter, a cat's meow, and a dog's bowwow, grow into the bigger, more exciting sounds his toys make, as he imagines them coming to life: the deep rumble of a garbage truck; a monkey pounding a drum; the roar of a lion. The acrylic and digital-media illustrations show both the semitransparent forms of the boy's imaginary companions and the mounting racket they make, emphasized by the varying size and shadings of the text. The text follows a gentle rhyme scheme throughout, which at times favors poetics over clarity, as in, Thoughts, they come and go, / words strung in rhythmic rows. Even so, the sounds always come through. The book moves from the cacophony of play to the peace of quiet time and, later, bedtimejarring the reader fully awake whenever the noisy toys return. A good demonstration of the contrast between loud and quiet.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)