MAVIS AND HER MARVELOUS MOONCAKES

Hosta’s latest is an imaginative feast about the moon and its many phases. Miss Mavis Sugar is a striped orange cat who loves to cook. She makes all sorts of sweet treats that her friends love to share, but her specialty is mooncake. For 14 days, she makes just one slice per night until the cake (the full moon) is finally done. Then her friends gather ’round to help eat the cake, one slice at a time, for another 14 days. “Mooncake, mooncake is so nice. / Yes, go ahead and eat a slice!” By the end, all the friends are asleep in their beds under a dark, new-moon sky. A final page labels the nine phases of the moon and lists some interesting facts. Repetitive refrains will have youngsters joining in, but the rhymes may be lost as a result of the text’s formatting. There is a folksy, quilt-like feel to Hosta’s collage illustrations. She combines dark backgrounds with bright foreground details, creating pictures that pop off the pages. The gentle cats and forest animals celebrating the moon may be just the ticket to dreamland—if one doesn’t mind the sugar. (Picture book. 3-7)