Noisy Night

January 23, 2017
It’s late, and no one is being very neighborly in the apartment building at the center of this unruly story. A well-matched Barnett (The Magic Word) and Biggs (Tinyville Town Gets to Work!) start on the first floor, where a kid is awakened by noise from the apartment above. “What is going la la la above my head?” the boy asks. The answer is revealed on the next spread: “A man is singing opera above my head.” This pattern repeats for on each of the building’s 10 floors, with disturbances at each stop (“rah rah rah” “cha cha cha”), until a cranky old man in the top apartment shuts the whole thing down with an emphatic “Go to bed!” Funky choices in color, texture, and typography lend an appropriate devil-may-care air to Biggs’s spreads, and he cleverly teases each successive vignette by letting a slice of it peek through, like film caught between frames. The improbable cast—which includes a sheep, pair of cowboys, and a cheerleading squad—and their percussive exclamations will elicit plenty of bedtime chuckles. Ages 4–8. Agent: Steven Malk, Writers House.

Starred review from December 1, 2016
Apartment occupants crane their necks and wonder what's making all the ruckus, while readers, conveyed up from floor to floor, get a voyeuristic view inside each apartment and see exactly what's making all that noise. A brown-skinned child with close-cropped, textured black hair, asleep in the dark, bolts upright with the first startling sounds, stands on the bed, and asks the ceiling, "What's going LALALA above my head?" A close-up cross section of the building shows the child's room as well as a partial view of the upstairs apartment from its occupant's waist down. What would be "going LALALA" in orange-striped trousers and shoes with spats? A page turn reveals a flamboyant white opera singer belting out notes before a music stand, his wild hair a corona of corkscrews. Below his feet and floorboards, readers see the top portion of the child's blue walls and the words, "A man is singing opera above my head." Each successive upper floor thrums ("ma ma ma," "BAA BAA BAA," "HAW HAW HAW"), lobbing delicious opportunities to enunciate at readers. Such punchy phonetic words beg to be mouthed loudly with lips, tongue, and jaw. Zany illustrations perfectly evoke cheek-by-jowl apartment living's intimacies, frustrations, and absurdity and continue to surprise with the antics happening one flight up. Variously patterned wallpapers exemplify the particular personalities of the building's inhabitants, who vary in color, age, temperament--even species. Story after story of silly surprises and sounds. (Picture book. 2-6)

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February 1, 2017

PreS-Gr 1-This rousing selection opens with a boy being kept awake by sounds coming from the apartment above his bedroom. The lad wonders what is going on. The audible commotion stems from a man singing opera, who, in turn, wonders about sounds above his head. This leads to a lively chain of characters, each on subsequent levels of a high-rise building, producing noise and then musing about the sounds they hear from above. These additional noises are in turn produced by a baby, sheep, cowboys, a young trumpet player, a crow, cheerleaders, dancers, and, finally, an old man directing them to go to bed. This title invites audience participation; young listeners can chime in with the swift, repetitive text or by reproducing the variety of sound effects. The book's cover nicely establishes the night setting and offers readers a good sense of where the story takes place. Spirited cartoonish illustrations enhance the mood by visually magnifying the evening chaos described in the text. Children's curiosity will be piqued by illustrations with partial glimpses at floors above; these images allow readers or listeners a chance to predict who or what might be making the noises. Vibrant oranges, yellows, greens, blues, purples, and reds stand out against the heavy black lines used to separate apartment floors. Attention given to artwork details can be seen in the patterned wallpaper, which varies from floor to floor.

Copyright 2017 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from November 1, 2016
Preschool-G *Starred Review* One of the problems of high-rise living is getting a good night's sleep with all those noisy neighbors. On the first floor, a little one can't get her rest, because something is going LaLaLa above her head. Two legs partially visible on the floor above hint at what's to come. Turn the page and a frizzy-haired mustachioed opera singer is practicing an aria. On ascending floors, a baby noisily coos ( MaMaMa ), cowboys laugh ( HawHawHaw ), cheerleaders leap ( RahRahRah ), and so on. Top floor? A pajama-clad bearded curmudgeon angrily shouts, Go to bed! The last page ( ZZZ ) shows the old man finally sleeping soundly in a blue-black room. The fun is seeing the clues at the top of each page and guessing who or what the next noisemakers will be. Barnett cleverly packs a punch with his spare text as he builds each surprise up to a humorous crescendo. Biggs' enticing cover is an homage to Chicago Imagist artist Roger Brown, whose distinctive painting style often depicts nocturnal cityscapes with black silhouettes of people glimpsed through windows of apartment buildings. Children will want to return to this witty cover to catch glimpses of all the characters they've met ascending from floor to floor. The interior's bright pages explode with color illustrating the various sound-makers gleefully going about their cacophonous activities.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)