By: Dorothy Laing
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This story is a delightful dialogue between a young girl and her father that searches for an answer to the title question, ‘what noise does a giraffe make?’ The discussion recounts various sounds of animals of which children may be familiar, but draws a blank for giraffes. It is both educational and probing in its simplicity and a conversation that will continue beyond the story.
Dorothy Laing was born on the island of Guadalcanal but has lived in New Zealand most of her life. She holds an LLB and an MA in art history from the University of Auckland.
In the days before the internet, it was one of the author’s children who posed the question, “What noise does a giraffe make?” The search for an answer was not easy in New Zealand, a country that boasts pastoral animals—mostly sheep, and wildlife of mainly birds.
This is a delightful children’s story which bounces poetically along. It gives alternative sounds to the established norms of English animal noises. It also encourages inquisitiveness and exploration that can go beyond parental knowledge. Children will want to read this book over and over again. It is highly recommended.
Cunningly cute, convincingly clever, and confoundingly a conundrum, What Noise Does a Giraffe Make?, makes use of all these ploys in its call to a curiosity, which does not kill the cat, but rather captures and coaxes the child into probing the world around us. With its play on rhyme and use of onomatopoeia to distract from the earnest query, the creative father in the dialogue attempts to answer with a patronizing pat, a sympathetic stroke, but the strident questioner will have none of this digression, ‘No! Not dogs, Daddy…’and the question is repeated. Kitty provides further distraction while Daddy then patiently takes his daughter on verbal sound waves to the farm and zoo, but the phylum list does not yield the answer. Instead, the silent reality of the unanswerable question cloaks the ending with an intriguing realization that not knowing and admitting it is the best answer.
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