SOUNDS ALL AROUND

This graphic survey of onomatopoeias takes on a global demographic of sounds.

The narrator is a smiling, golden star that appears on every page, introducing readers to an individual sound as it is expressed in different languages. Each chapter represents a category of sounds, starting with animal sounds, then moving on to loud noises and sounds the human body makes, before ending with the expressive sounds of emotions. Refreshingly, the survey ventures beyond Western European languages, including Malay, Latvian, Punjabi, Telugu, and Filipino, among others. Languages that do not use the Roman alphabet are transliterated, so an Arabic lion says, “zayiyr”; when bubbles pop in Russia they go, “chpok!”; and a Korean clock goes, “ddok ddak.” Though it’s easy to see how children can have fun mimicking the sounds expressed in the speech bubbles that dot the colorful cartoon illustrations, there is no appreciable education about the cultures represented. Some pages feature illustrations of human characters of various skin colors. While, admirably, there seems to be no racial correspondence of skin color to language, the narrator makes some jokes that fall flat, as when it declares its preference for classical music when a Danish duck says “rap,” or seems to make fun of Korean screams. There is no map to locate languages geographically for readers.

This survey of languages is fun but superficial.