MARCELLA AND THE MOON

By a new author-illustrator, a lovely book about a little duck who paints pictures of the moon. Marcella the duck loves to paint more than anything; she won't even play in the pond with the other ducks. Every night, she paints her favorite subject, the moon, capturing its changes on canvas from the round full moon to the sliver of the crescent. At the dark of the moon, it's too dark to swim. The other ducks ask the moon expert, Marcella, where it is and she tells them that the moon will reappear the next night. Sure enough, the moon appears in a thin sliver and grows to its full, round size again. Deeply colored with rich blue and green backgrounds, splashed with bright yellow ducks, one of the most attractive pictures shows the line of paintings hung out to dry, with all the phases of the moon in a row while the real moon shines overhead.