At the end of David Ouimet's dystopian picture book I Go Quiet, the nameless, socially alienated young narrator vows, "Someday, I will make a shimmering noise." Well, that day has apparently arrived: in Ouimet's spirits-buoying follow-up, I Get Loud, a girl who appears to be I Go Quiet's narrator finds something to crow about.
As I Get Loud begins, the narrator, who is flying a kite, spies another girl her age: "I see you, will you see me?" When their kite strings tangle in the sky, the girls become fast friends and proceed to share experiences both conventional (they go fishing, duck out of the rain) and fantastical: "Have you ever screamed underwater/ as loud as you could?" the narrator muses as she and her pal ride a pair of sea creatures. After they're separated in a throng of people escaping a flood, the narrator ultimately manages to find her friend because she's now equally well versed in talking and listening: "In the jumble of voices I hear/ the only one I know./ I shout, you gasp. I mew, you roar."
Ouimet's euphonious text is accompanied by equally lyrical illustrations for which he has banished the industrial and grayscale palettes of I Go Quiet. This time a strikingly blue sky is a recurring motif, and the ancient-city-like backdrop looks bronze and stately rather than gloomy and decrepit. The volume at which one speaks, Ouimet seems to be saying, can even shape the way that one sees. --Nell Beram, freelance writer and YA author