Why Are You So Quiet?

by Jaclyn Desforges, Risa Hugo (Illustrator)

Overview

Into a world where it often seems nobody is listening comes a poignant story that celebrates the power of silence.

“Why are you so quiet?” Her teacher implores it, her classmates shout it, even her mom wonders it. Everyone, it seems, is concerned for Myra Louise. So, in search of an answer to the tiresome question nobody will stop asking, she invents a listening machine. If the raindrops, or the crickets, or the dryers at the laundromat can tell her why they’re so quiet, maybe Myra Louise can finally make everybody understand. But the more she listens, the less interested she becomes in finding any answer at all. Because Myra Louise comes to realize that all she really needs is someone else to listen alongside her.

With gorgeous illustrations from Risa Hugo, Jaclyn Desforges’s first picture book champions introversion and the value of being a listener, a thinker, and an observer in our increasingly loud world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781773214344
Publisher:	Annick Press, Limited
Publication date:	09/08/2020
Pages:	32
Sales rank:	1,166,496
Product dimensions:	9.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)
Lexile:	AD720L (what's this?)
Age Range:	4 - 7 Years

About the Author

Jaclyn Desforges is a Pushcart-nominated writer whose work has appeared in The Puritan, The Fiddlehead, Contemporary Verse 2, Minola Review and others. She’s the winner of the 2018 RBC/PEN Canada New Voices Award, and also the winner of two Short Works Prizes: the 2019 Hamilton Public Library Freda Waldon Award for Fiction, and the 2019 Judy Marsales Real Estate Ltd. Award for Poetry. She’s an MFA candidate at the University of British Columbia and lives in Hamilton, Ontario with her partner and daughter.

Risa Hugo is an illustrator with a Bachelor of Fine Arts and Major in Illustration from Emily Carr University of Art and Design. She spent most of her childhood living in Japan but currently lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, with her husband and their son.

Editorial Reviews

2020-06-03
Is it better to listen than to be noisy?

Quiet Myra Louise thinks so. Soft-voiced, she enjoys silence and is rewarded by attending closely to sounds. Her silent nature leads Mom, classmate Jeremy, and her teacher each to ask the titular question. Others’ frustration heightens Louise’s own: She can’t answer. But she has an idea: Gathering various items and poring over books, Myra Louise builds a listening machine complete with earpiece and becomes a better listener. Adding another earpiece to the contraption enhances other people’s aural experiences, too: Mom hears the enchanting sound of the story she reads aloud—then reads extra chapters. At school, Myra Louise invites Jeremy to listen to a ladybug. The tale conveys a positive message about the joys of quietude and listening but is unconvincing. A mechanical contrivance comprised of found bits isn’t required for mindful attention: Isn’t a careful listener one’s own “listening machine”? How does the machine actually work anyway? The story also never indicates that others become so taken with Myra Louise’s ideas they permanently adopt her method of engaging with the world, and Jeremy’s joining in on the machine ends the proceedings abruptly. The illustrations are serviceable but colorful and present freckled, wide-eyed, brown-haired Myra Louise and her mother as white; some classmates are racially diverse.

Well-meaning but misses the mark. (Picture book. 4-7)

Kirkus Reviews