FULL MOON

A boy who lives in the countryside gets a glass globe of the city where his grandmother lives as a birthday gift. Readers can see right away that it’s a magical globe, as it hovers over his nightstand next to Grandma’s picture. When he awakes in the middle of the night, he hooks his fishline on to the full moon and it pulls him to the city. There, “swooping roller coasters” twist among the skyscrapers, the zoo finds monkeys blowing bubbles and ostriches licking lollipops, and the lions prance and strut in front of the library. He asks the dancing ladies and the cowboys on motorcycles about his Grandma, but each time “the moon lifted me away before I got an answer.” Finally, at the great green lady in the harbor, he finds her sitting atop an elephant and she wishes him a happy birthday. The next morning, he peers inside his crystal globe and sees her—on the back of the elephant. Glowing edges and the melted texture of dreamscapes form this New York City, not black and white so much as shadowy and misty grays done in graphite or chalk. Add this to the ever-growing pantheon of evocative picture books that take New York as their theme and as their heart. (Picture book. 4-8)