Drummer Hoff

A rhythmic, explosive picture book where pattern, sound, and color march together. Drummer Hoff retells an old folk rhyme about soldiers who build a grand cannon — the Sultan — and the drummer who fires it.

Ed Emberley’s woodcut illustrations pulse with energy: bright blocks of red, blue, and yellow layered in bold symmetry, half–folk art, half–1960s psychedelia. The soldiers are toy-like, dressed for a parade rather than a war, and the cannon itself becomes a creature of rhythm and ritual more than violence. When it finally goes KAHBAHBLOOM, the story dissolves into silence — and the last spread, a field of flowers around the rusting cannon, leaves the echo hanging.

It’s a book about noise and aftermath. About spectacle and the strange beauty of its decay. Playful on the surface, unsettling underneath — Drummer Hoff turns a simple folk rhyme into a visual meditation on war, glory, and what remains when the sound fades.