Loud Emily - Softcover

Nancy Carpenter is the acclaimed illustrator of Fannie in the Kitchen, as well as Masai and I, Sitti’s Secrets, and Loud Emily, among other books. She lives with her husband, daughter, and cat in Brooklyn, New York.

Ages 4^-8. Part tall tale, part stage show, this boisterous picture book set in a mid-nineteenth-century whaling town combines elements of Upstairs, Downstairs with a wild sea-adventure. From the day she is born, Emily's booming voice shatters the peace of her parents' stately mansion, but she finds acceptance in the happy din with the servants downstairs, where the cook likes "a lass who speaks up." To avoid her fate in a school for "Softspoken Girls," Emily runs away to sea, where the captain uses her trumpeting voice to call all hands on deck, and even the whales listen to her wild tunes. Then, in a storm, she takes over the damaged lighthouse and shouts to warn the ships of danger; her voice rings out loud and true, and she's a hero. Carpenter's exuberant oil paintings are in the folk-art styles of the period. From the opening scene with the bellowing, big-mouthed infant bursting out of a world too small for her, this is akin to the 1995 Caldecott Honor Books, Anne Isaacs' Swamp Angel and Julius Lester's John Henryexcept that this hero doesn't grow into a giant: she's a small child and she's powerful. At first, Emily's mother holds embroidered pillows over her ears as Emily's voice shatters the crystal and throws the plates in the drawing room; but by the end, everyone moves in step to Emily's command: the servants in the house, the sailors on the ship, and the whales in the sea. Hazel Rochman