Hi. My name is Carmen Agra Deedy and this is my newest book, The Rooster Who Would Not be Quiet! I’m going to read a little bit of it to you today.
“Once there was a village where the streets rang with song from morning til night. Dogs arooo, bayed, mothers, ohhh, choo, bochoo, crooned, engines brrrmmm, brrrmmm, hummed, fountains warbled and everybody sang in the shower.” La cucaracha, la cucaracha. (Spanish) Wow.
“For everyone and everything in this village had a song to sing. And this made La Paz a very noisy place. It was hard to hear. It was hard to sleep. It was hard to think. And no one knew what to do. So they fired the mayor. Like you do. And now they were a very noisy village without a mayor. So they held an election. Only Don Pepe, promised peace and quiet. He won by a landslide. The next day a very polite law appeared in the village square. No loud singing in public por favor. Things were getting better already.
But more laws soon followed. No loud singing at home. No loud singing. No singing. Basta, quiet already! Until finally the noisy village of La Pass was silent as a tomb, dun dun dun dun. Oh, dear. Even the tea kettles, (whistles), were afraid to whistle. I don’t like this one little bit. Do you?
Some people left the village singing loudly, others stayed behind and learned to, hmmm, hmmm, hmmm, hum. The rest were just grateful to have a good night’s sleep for crying out loud, which is like singing but not really. Seven very quiet years passed. Then one evening a saucy gallito and his family wondered into the village and roosted in a fragrant mango tree. When the rooster awoke the next morning he did what roosters do, he sang kee-kee-ree-kee.
As his rotten luck would have it, the mango tree grew beneath, oh, no, the cranky mayor’s window, uh oh. ‘You there,’ groused Dom Pepe, ‘no singing, it’s the law. What’s the matter with you?’ ‘Well, that’s a silly law,’ said the merry Gallito. ‘Smell the sweet mango tree. How can I keep from singing?’”
That’s all you get. But children I promise you the rooster will be alright in the end.