A little girl with a big voice who lives in a 19-century whaling town finds a way to be useful and happy aboard a sailing ship

Big-voiced little Emily hires on to a ship in 1850s New England to help the captain call out commands to the crew, and subsequently saves his ship and others from grounding on rocks in the fog. The illustrations of Emily with her mouth perpetually in full shout are funny.

Always loud and can't seem to stay quiet, ends up finding something that allows her to be as loud as she desires.

as Emily was growing up, her voice was too loud for everybody that was around her. as she got older she was able to find a way to use her loud voice to help other.
location: pierce college library
age group:4/5 ( )

Creating a disturbance, almost from the moment of her birth, young Emily lived her life at a volume far higher than her sedate, nineteenth-century parents and tutor would have liked. No matter how hard she tried, she just couldn't help being LOUD. With the threat of boarding school looming over her head - Miss Meekmeister's School for Soft-Spoken Girls being the institution selected - Emily instead finds herself embarking on a sea voyage, aboard a ship that had advertised for someone with a loud voice. Here, under the command of soft-spoken Captain Baroo, Emily puts her natural talent to good use, making friends and, eventually, saving the day...

As someone who was counseled one more than one occasion, as a young girl and woman, to walk and talk in a more "ladylike" way - what can I say? I have a bit of a stride (a laughably ungainly one, as it happens), and tend to be rather decided, in my speech - by which was usually meant, that I should be less assertive, and more "properly" feminine, I have great sympathy for the idea behind this picture-book. Little girls sometimes need to SHOUT! I'm not sure they always need to shout, as Emily does (I get a headache, just thinking about it), but I took that as storytelling license, on O'Neill's part. I could have wished for a narrative that didn't rely on the fantasy of girl-whale cooperation and friendship - no, children, New England whalers of the 19th century weren't a benign force, in the cetacean world - although a more accurate picture is given in the author's afterword. The artwork, done in oil, and using a "crackle" technique to simulate 19th-century American painting, was very appealing, as were the decorative endpapers, done in scrimshaw style.

All in all, I enjoyed Loud Emily, and am glad that it was chosen as one of our January selections, over in The Picture-Book Club to which I belong, where our theme this month is "Children on Adventures, or Exploring." ( )