THE PIRATE WHO TRIED TO CAPTURE THE MOON

by Dennis Haseley ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 1983

Something a little bit different, with an ending that comes as a satisfactory surprise. The fierce pirate loves nothing and lives alone on an island. He captures every ship there is--the ship of flowers, the ship of horses, and the ship of birds that no one could catch--and then he attempts to capture the moon. He begins by ripping across the earth, gathering up all the things the moon loves (""kitchen curtains and long candles and violins playing sad music and moody poets and lonely wolves and dancers who danced in the middle of the night') and taking them to his island. But the moon, as it comes closer to find them, proves bigger than he'd thought. Frightened, he frees everything. Then ""as the whole sky became moon,"" he shivers: ""Moon, wonderful moon, it is you who have captured me."" Truesdell's moon with its wobbly fried-egg eyes seems out of synch with Haseley's more lyrical bent, but in the main her jaunty cartoons, all black-and-white line and wash except for the yellow moon, help the rhythmic read-aloud text skip along.

Pub Date: March 1, 1983

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harper & Row

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1983

Categories: CHILDREN'S