A little shrew had wonderful news! He wanted to tell the whole world, but it was too noisy. 'I know the secret of Peace on Earth!' he said. Nobody heard him. Everyone was much too busy doing their own thing, creating their own noises, and not listening to anything.

He wanted to say that if everyone in the whole world just sat still for a moment and listened, there would be Peace on Earth.

Jeanne Willis uses a wonderful hurly-burly of onomatopoeic words to accompany her familiar energetic rhythmic text, and Tony Ross rises to the challenge, producing illustrations that perfectly match both in their imaginative variety and in their glorious details.