Noisy Night
By Jan Carr,
Common Sense Media Reviewer
Common Sense Media Reviewers
Guessing game with rhymes makes apartment noises fun.
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What's the Story?
NOISY NIGHT is the story of a 10-story apartment building at bedtime. A young boy on the first floor can't go to sleep because someone "is going La La La" above his head. Turn the page to reveal an opera singer, who asks, "What is going ma ma ma above my head?" Turn the page to see a baby, who hears "BAA BAA BAA" above him. And so on, up the 10 flights. In this noisy apartment building, there's a sheep, cowboys, a girl playing a trumpet, a crow, cheerleaders, a couple dancing, and finally a cranky old man hollering, "GO TO BED!" So everyone does!
Is It Any Good?
Apartment dwellers everywhere will relate to this fresh and funny book about all the crazy, unidentified noises coming from the floor above and preventing sleep. As Noisy Night follows the trail of sound up 10 floors, author Mac Barnett skillfully provides kids with the opportunity to guess the source of the sound before they turn the page for the answer. He's also built in a sly, seamless phonics lesson, since all the sounds ("RAH RAH RAH," "cha cha cha") rhyme with "aw."
Illustrator Brian Biggs' bright, eye-catching art provides clever visual hints, each time showing a sliver of the floor above. And he presents racially diverse residents, including an interracial couple. If kids who don't live in apartments have trouble visualizing the lay of the building, they can flip to the cover where it's pictured in full, with each noisy neighbor pictured in silhouette -- more chances to guess who's who! As the neighbors whoop it up and the noises stack up, so do the simple lessons in this antic bedtime story bracketed by a young boy on the bottom floor and an old man on the top just trying to catch some sleep.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about the noises in Noisy Night. Can you guess who's making each one? Which clues are in the pictures?
How many floors are in the building? Can you count them in the story and on the cover?
If you peek in the windows on the cover, can you figure out who's on each floor?
Book Details
- Author: Mac Barnett
- Illustrator: Brian Biggs
- Genre: Picture Book
- Book type: Fiction
- Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
- Publication date: March 7, 2017
- Publisher's recommended age(s): 4 - 8
- Number of pages: 32
- Available on: Nook, Hardback, iBooks, Kindle
- Last updated: July 13, 2017
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