The Very Noisy House

In a tall house, a little old lady walks across her house with the aid of a wooden stick, ‘CLOMP, CLOMP, CLOMP’ which sets off a chain reaction: a dog barks, a cat meows, a baby cries, five birds squawk. The noises reverberate up through the house and down again creating an ear-splitting pandemonium until, down at the bottom, the old woman, annoyed at all the noise, takes up her knitting as a distraction. The rhythmic sound of the needles clickety-clicking has a calming effect on the dog and soon the house is quiet once again. But then the old woman feels like a nice cup of tea and there we go again.

The pages of the book are covered with more and more, then less and less, noisy words to denote the building and subsiding of the sounds which young children will delight in echoing. The cutaway views of the house’s interiors reveal an intriguing detailed jumble of furniture, fittings, tools and utensils not to mention more than one portrait of Korky Paul’s famous witch character, Winnie.