Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices was published by Harper & Row in 1988 and won the Newbery Medal in 1989. It is one of the most formally inventive works in children’s literature: fourteen poems about insects (grasshoppers, water striders, fireflies, book lice, moths, honeybees) written to be read aloud by two readers simultaneously — their voices sometimes joining in unison, sometimes alternating, sometimes creating counterpoint effects where different words sound simultaneously.
The format is displayed on the page in two columns: the left-hand column is Reader 1, the right-hand column is Reader 2. When text appears on the same line in both columns, both voices speak simultaneously. When text appears in only one column, only that voice speaks. The result — when performed — is a kind of chamber music for voices: harmonies, canons, call-and-response patterns, and moments of deliberate dissonance that make the poems physical experiences rather than merely intellectual ones.
Fleischman’s content matches his form: each poem captures something essential about its insect subject through rhythm and sound rather than description. “Grasshoppers” bounces and leaps; “Water Striders” slides and skims; “Fireflies” blinks in darkness. The scientific accuracy is genuine (Fleischman researched entomology seriously), but the poems’ primary mode is musical rather than informational — they make the reader feel what it might be like to be a creature whose experience is organized around different senses and different scales than human life.
Collecting Joyful Noise
First edition (Harper & Row, New York, 1988): Cloth binding, dust jacket. Illustrated by Eric Beddows.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $20–$50
- Signed first edition: $50–$120
- Without jacket: $5–$12
A Newbery Medal winner with continuous classroom and performance demand. Values are moderate but stable, driven by educational markets and poetry collectors.