Noisy, noisy city by Andrew Kelly and Helene Magisson

A joyous look at a busy, busy city full of noise from the roads and the sky, from police cars and fire engines; children will love listening to this cheerful look at living in a city, as it is read aloud, joining in with the sounds the vehicles make. What fun. 

Hilarious illustrations cover each page showing lots of things which make a lot of noise and then a series of bulbous cars bumper to bumper, tooting at each other in their rush to get somewhere else.

The endpapers show a spaghetti of roadways introducing the reader to those things which criss cross our cities.

Starting with the ding ding of the tram, over the page is the chop chop of a helicopter, then the rat tat of a jackhammer, the beep beep of a reversing truck, then the vroom vroom of a car. From then on we see more and more cars coming into the story, blaming on their radios, toot tooting at each other, or honk honking. A police car whaaa is heard through the crowd, a fire engine and an ambulance each make their own distinctive noise.

Kids will love calling out the various noises as they read, predicting the noise each makes, then joining in with the others as they recognise the noise and what machine it belongs to. 

The city is absolutely full of noise, and this is shown through the fun of this book. The comic illustrations will grab the reader’s attention seeing the overlooking buildings, almost bending over the roads, watching what is happening. The few people seen in the illustrations points to the idea of the car as king in our cities. Faces peer out of the apartment buildings, a few people manage to wander the streets, and the faces of some of the drivers tell a story in themselves.

Themes: Cars, Traffic, Cities, Road rage, Humour.

Fran Knight