Children's story about the entire world being quiet
March 2, 2014 11:39 AM   Subscribe

Help me find the name of this story I remember about a moment when everyone stops making noise at once.

As I remember it, a king or prince decides he wants to hear what it sounds like when everyone in the kingdom (or world?) shouts at once, so he issues a decree that next Tuesday (or whenever) at 12pm everyone will shout and he will listen to it. But through the course of the week, everyone in the kingdom decides that they would like to hear that noise, too, so they secretly decide not to shout but instead listen to everyone else yelling. When the time comes, no one yells, everyone listens, and the silence (background noise?) is beautiful.

What was the name of this story?? I believe it may have been a picture book.
posted by grog to Writing & Language (4 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
Possibly Prince Silencio?
posted by jabes at 12:38 PM on March 2, 2014 [1 favorite]


One of the early episodes of Fraggle Rock was about that. (But that wasn't the reason why everyone shut up.)
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 2:16 PM on March 2, 2014


The version I heard 25 years ago started with the world all agreeing that they wanted to shout together at a certain time to see what would happen, and ended with one little old lady and her son being the only people who shouted. But it was read aloud in an assembly, so I don't know the book name.
posted by aniola at 9:41 AM on March 3, 2014


Best answer: I finally found it! The book is called "The Loudest Noise in the World."

Here is a blurb about it (third one down): http://orangemarmaladebooks.com/tag/the-loudest-noise-in-the-world/
posted by grog at 9:25 PM on December 16, 2014


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