Joyful Noise by Paul Fleischman

By about the third poem, it hit me. Paul Fleischman crafts his stories so that we hear multiple points of view. While this may not hold true for each of his books, it is true of the three most recent ones we have read-- Seedfolks, Bull Run, and Joyful Noise. In the first poem, Grasshoppers, the readers are speaking the poem from a third person point of view. But, in the next one, Water Striders, two water striders are talking to us in the first person. I started each new poem eager to figure out what the voice would be. Would each reader be a different character? Would they work together for one point of view? Would it be third person like the first poem?

I have a love-hate relationship with insects. As a former Biology major, I find their anatomy fascinating and enjoyed learning about the complexity of all living things, but on a personal level I hate bugs! I can't even kill one, but I certainly won't have one near me. So, I enjoyed the illustrations in Joyful Noise because of the detail drawn for each of the beautiful insects. And, I gained a different perspective on the insects I usually just find bothersome and gross.

Fleischman did an excellent job of varying the poems to keep me engaged in the story. Some of the poems like Water Striders, Grasshoppers, and Mayflies, provided factual information but in a fanciful way. The reader learns about water striders distributing their weight on "the thin film of the surface" (p. 7) and that mayflies only live for a day. In other poems, the insects are personified. The digger wasp is an industrious mother and the moth struggles to resist what he knows he should avoid-- the porch light.

I never would have thought I would enjoy a collection of poems about bugs!