I love children’s picture books; I really do. Even as my daughter gets older, I still like to read picture books with her because I find the best picture books lead into some of the most amazing discussions and this book is one of the best. Authors of children’s picture books are forced to distill the most complicated ideas into a few simple, accessible words. This can often lead to insightful ways to view these issues even for the adult reading with the child.This book starts with a happy village. The people and animals and even anthropomorphic objects express their happiness by singing and talking and generally making noise. The problem is that sometimes the noise gets to be a bit too much and not everyone likes that much noise. So the people oust the village mayor and elect a mayor who promises to be tough on noise. He affects a new “polite” law that at first seems perfect: “No Loud Singing in Public, Por Favor.” Over time though this morphs into more and more restictive laws until finally they have: “Basta! Be Quiet Already!” This was a great place to discuss with my daughter that laws that restrict personal freedoms, even laws that seem like they accomplish something you want, are dangerous. We discussed how easy it is for freedom to erode over time in the name of safety or the common good or any other number of “good” sounding ideas. I love how Yelchin illustrates the progressively more restrictive rules until finally people even have to be quiet in their own homes.Some of the people in town do not want to be quiet so they pack up and leave their village. Ahh, another tough question we discussed. Should good people just leave their home if things are not going well or stay and try to affect change?Then, enters our hero, the rooster, who would not be quieted. He continues to bravely sing despite the persecution he must endure to do so. We discussed situations on a smaller scale in our neighborhood and school where we can and should stand up. We then discussed this on a national, international, and even historical scale. Of course, this is still a children’s book so the rooster does not end up as chicken soup in the end but in real life it is not always that simple. What would the rooster have chosen if instead of imprisoning him, the mayor had threatened to kill the hen and his chicks. How would that have influenced his decision? How would that influence ours? We also talked about some of the freedoms we take for granted because many, many people in the past in our country were brave enough to sing.This is a powerful book that makes accessible a timeless , frightening problem. We loved it.I would also be remiss not to mention Yelchin’s amazing illustrations that add tremendously to the ethos of this book. My favorite illustration though was from the happy times at the beginning of the book when musical notes can even be seen in the side of the mountain.