TO THE ACTUAL MOON AND BACK

A rabbit parent learns the hard way the importance of choosing one’s words carefully.

The narrator, an anthropomorphized rabbit with a Jerry Garcia beard, says good night to a bunny child—“I love you to the moon and back”—to which the youngster replies, “GREAT! LET’S GO!” The little one sets out on foot, the parent trailing pantingly behind. As the parent puts it, “Before I knew it, we were visiting a top-secret governmental aerospace facility.” At the kid’s direction, they board a rocket ship (how else are they supposed to get to outer space?), blast off for a few days, and crash-land on the moon. By now the parent is irked and says, “‘To the moon and back’ is just an expression, and why do you take things so LITERALLY?!” To which the bunny replies, “But…you love me anyway. Right?” The parent is reassuring, the two share a hug, and now comes the hard part: As the parent puts it, “We literally had no idea” how to get back home. Powered by cartoonish art that makes good use of panels and dialogue balloons, this wild ride has enough thrills and close calls to qualify as an action-adventure story. But even when it veers into the extraterrestrial, the story never loses sight of its mission: to document a parent’s stratospheric love for a child.

An affectionate and funny spoof of young children’s literal-mindedness.