Michelle Blanchard Ardillo

This delightful children’s picture book has no words, just beautiful and colorful illustrations. It is a master class in the literary device onomatopoeia. If I were still teaching middle school language arts, I would bring this book into my 7th and 8th grade literature classroom and have students sit in small groups to “read” it to each other. While they had fun making all the sounds illustrated by the cartoons throughout, they would learn the literary device in a way that just memorizing a word and definition can’t accomplish.

Buzz! Boom! Bang! (NorthSouth Books, Inc.) by Benjamin Gottwald is described as a “brand-new kind of interactive picture book” that invites the reader to “make the sounds you see.” Gottwald’s idea for this book was the thesis for his degree program and earned him the Hamburg (Germany) Picture Book Prize.

This book also provides endless opportunities to develop a child’s early vocabulary by asking, “What is that in this picture? What is she doing?” The subject matter covers sports, nature, weather, the seasons and their specific holidays, and so much more.

My favorite of the illustrations is on page 54, with a woman/girl sitting in the strong breeze coming off of a body of water. Growing up on the bank of the Mississippi River, I loved climbing up the levee and sitting there, watching tugboats and ships mosey on down the river headed for the Gulf of Mexico. I loved the breeze coming off the river, the smells, the sounds, the peacefulness of being up there on the levee all by myself. It’s the first place I went to when I would come home from college to visit my parents. It still breaks my heart that I can’t return home to do this ever again, since Hurricane Katrina destroyed my hometown, swept my parents’ home away and cast all the members of my family to different parts of Louisiana and Texas.

I loved this short book, and I plan on gifting it to young children and grandchildren of my friends. In fact, I’d love to “read” it with them!

Thanks to NetGalley and NorthSouth Books, Inc. for this delightful ARC. It’s available on September 30, 2025, be sure to enjoy with a little person you love!