When I Listen to Silence

Veteran author Pendziwol (Me and You and the Red Canoe; Once Upon a Northern Night has taken as her theme the idea of what silence can bring to a child. But we are not in for a dreamy afternoon looking at the clouds or listening to birdsong, and the quiet image of a dark night sky on the cover perhaps wrongly hints at When I Listen to Silence’s being a soothing bedtime story.

For the little girl narrating her experience here, the chance to sit and listen opens the doors to a riot of imaginary doings.

When I sit, silent, I can hear the trees breathing.

When I hear the trees breathing, they begin to dance.

When they begin to dance, the bears join in…

The silence soon becomes rather noisy, with thumping and bumping bears, roaring dragons and a “star-dappled steed” that can take you “all the way to the moon and back”.

The brief repetitive text is reminiscent of the popular If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, although here it is with “Whens” not ‘Ifs” that the tale is moved along. We go from a lively woodland scene up into the night sky, then all the way to outer space, and back down to a rolling green ocean.

When a ship full of pirates comes alongside, shouting
“Thar she blows!” and “Shiver me timbers!”

The mermaids tell them, “Hush!”

When the mermaids tell them “Hush!” they do.

Now the reader is encouraged to take a few deep breaths. The action slows, and peace reigns once again as we see a whale napping on the seabed and the child dozing on a swing.

The story is bracketed beginning and end with the small pigtailed girl curled up on a window seat in a room full of plants and household trinkets. She is imploring her mother, who is busy with laptop and cellphone, to “pleeease, be quiet”, an interesting turnaround from the usual parent-to-child plea for silence. The few contemporary elements in this scene are not at odds with the tone of fantasy that fills the book. Mok’s illustrations are executed with pencil, ink and pastel in soothing shades of teal and a biscuit brown, sparked here and there with bursts of brighter colour. There is a childlike feel to the rendering of the natural elements of animals and trees. The picture of a flock of smiling-faced stars flying through a turquoise and yellow sky is especially enchanting,

When I Listen to Silence is a title for primary book collections where young readers can enjoy this small adventure either or on their own or in a group setting.