LISTEN! LISTEN!
by Ann Rand ; illustrated by Paul Brand
<p>Happily—joyously—the Rands are still turning out the kind of snappy evocation/celebration they pioneered when it was novel to be modern; less happily, the rhyming text retains a childish tone that seems forced today. Still, out of familiar sounds come continual surprises—after "a very tiny plop. It might be a raindrop," there's "a much bigger whop, for I hit the fence with my ball," and it falls apart, nails flying; "But oh, dear, did you hear/ that tremendous Blop!/ I happened to fall,/ you see,/ so that Blop! was me." There's also "something without any sound" and a "Rrroooaaarrrrr!. . . that's not a door" or a dog or a bear or a wolf and, at the last, "the very best," the mixed-up sounds of the world waking up. The bright bounding forms make it well worth looking at if not always worth listening to.</p>