A MOON OF MY OWN

Readers are brought along on a young girl’s imaginative nighttime adventure around the world.

The moon is both a source of wonder for the girl and a companion that is always there. In the first-person narration, the girl addresses the moon directly: “Hey there, Moon. There you are again. / I wonder, why do you follow me?” Subtly, the author addresses some of the questions and observations kids make about this celestial body. “Each night you seem a little different from the night before. / But I always know it’s you.” These queries are answered in the backmatter, which further explains each topic the girl wonders about, describes and maps the places she visits on her adventure, describes the phases of the moon and gives further facts, and provides activities that can help children understand why the moon appears to change. Gorgeous silhouettes against a deep blue, star-spangled sky follow the girl, clad in boots and a dress and sporting a pageboy cut, as she visits the Eiffel Tower, the Trans-Siberian Railway, the Serengeti, the Great Wall of China, the Taj Mahal, Sequoia National Park, the Great Barrier Reef, the Amazon, and the Arctic and Antarctic. Appropriately, the moon changes phase as the pages turn (the new moon is not represented), though it always appears as it would from the Northern Hemisphere.

This just may encourage young readers to look up to the night sky and gain a new friend of their own.