Yoshio, equipped with his yellow umbrella, is making his way to school through the busy streets of Tokyo when he stumbles upon a sound he's never heard before, "high and then low, squeaky and vibrating--amazing! It was a koto player carefully tuning her instrument." When he asks the gray-haired street musician if she has a favorite sound, she says the most beautiful is "the sound of ma, of silence."
This throws the boy for a loop: "Where can I find silence? Yoshio wondered as he listened to the thwack of his boots on the pavement." For the rest of the school day he listens for silence, but it eludes him. Even the stalks of the playground's bamboo grove make a "takeh-takeh-takeh" sound in the wind. After school the bullet trains whoosh. At dinner, he notices "What a noisy family!" and even bath time isn't silent because "little droplets of water kept dripping off his nose." He falls asleep to a distant radio before he can hear the quiet of the night. It's not until he goes to school the next day and opens up a beloved storybook that the world around him seems to disappear. At last, silence: "It was between and underneath every sound. And it had been there all along."
Julia Kuo (Go, Little Green Truck) captures the sights of bustling Tokyo with clean, precise lines, fascinating details and a rich autumnal color palette. The Sound of Silence calls attention to the "symphony hall" of sounds that surround us every day, and the silent spaces in between them. --Karin Snelson, children's & YA editor, Shelf Awareness