When You Gotta Crow, You Gotta Crow! The Rooster Who Would Not Be Quiet! by Carmen Agra Deedy

There was once a village what the streets rang with song from morn till night.

Dogs barked, engines hummed, fountains warbled, and everyone sang in the shower.

The little village of La Paz was a happy place, but it was noisy.

Then a cranky, dyspeptic curmudgeon named Don Pepe was elected Mayor of La Paz on a platform which banned singing and everything else that made noise. At first the villagers enjoyed the peace and quiet. Their sleep was deep and undisturbed. But in the way of some rulers, Don Pepe grew more dictatorial and his law became more and more draconian.

In fact, it progressively became more and more ridiculous.

NO LOUD SINGING IN PUBLIC.
NO LOUD SINGING IN PUBLIC AT HOME.
NO LOUD SINGING AT HOME.
NO LOUD SINGING.

BASTA! QUIET ALREADY!

The town was quiet as a tomb.

But there is one scofflaw who insists on his rights. The town's chief rooster refuses to follow the new law. He climbed into a big tree and sang at daybreak outside the Mayor's bedroom window.

KEE KEE REE KEE! HE SANG.

The rebel rooster pleads his case that the tree is so lovely that he is forced to sing from it. He is promptly incarcerated, and Don Pepe has the magnificent tree chopped down.

"YOU HAVE NO TREE! WILL YOU SING THEN?

THE PLUCKY GALLITO SHRUGGED. "I HAVE NO TREE, BUT I HAVE MY HENS AND CHICKS.

HOW CAN I KEEP FROM SINGING? KEE KEE REE KEE!!"

One by one, Don Pepe deprives the rooster of his reasons for song. He takes away his family. He takes away his freedom by isolating him in a cage. He deprives him of his corn. He covers his cage so that he cannot sing to the rising sun.

"WHY ARE YOU STILL SINGING?

"I SING FOR THOSE WHO DARE NOT SING OR HAVE FORGOTTEN HOW TO SING."

In her latest, The Rooster Who Would Not Be Quiet! (Scholastic Press, 2017), Carmen Agra Deedy offers a little parable set in folktale format which goes beyond the old saw about there being such a thing as too much of a good thing, standing up for the right of everyone to sing his own song. Deedy is a storyteller who knows how to build suspense and humor simultaneously as the clever rooster takes charge and turns the tables on the despotic Don Pepe and rouses the populace to take back their songs. The mixed media artwork of Eugene Yelchin matches Deedy's narration with subtle folk-style illustrations, spearing the dyspeptic Don Pepe in comic caricature as he progressively loses his cool with the quixotic rooster. This is a clever tale which can be read on several levels, part aesthetic, part patriotic.

Carmen Agra Deedy is also the author of The Library Dragon, Martina the Beautiful Cockroach, Yellow Star, the: The Legend of King Christian X of Denmark, and 14 Cows for America.