MOO IN THE MORNING

Maitland (Bookstore Ghost, not reviewed, etc.) proposes that anyone who rhapsodizes about the countryside’s peace and quiet isn’t listening. Weary of the city’s morning din, a mother takes her daughter for a visit to Uncle Jack’s farm—where the sun’s rise is heralded by a shattering bovine “Ooom-moooo!” followed by a mélange of crowing, quacking, bleating, and chirping, capped by the rumble of farm machinery. Time to go, says mom, back to the “big, bright, busy, quiet city.” Kulman (Red Light Stop, Green Light Go, not reviewed) evokes both urban and rural cacophony with zigzag lines, strewing simply drawn figures across increasingly crowded pages as the noise builds. The text too, broken into small blocks, curving single lines, and individual words, builds to gabbling, clanking crescendos. A droll commentary on less judgmental treatments of the theme, like Eve Merriam’s Bam! Bam! Bam! (1995) and Margaret Wise Brown’s Country Noisy Book (reissued 1994). (Picture book. 5-7)