KING OF THE MOON

A man with a special sandwich visits the King of the Moon in this picture book.

Clyde —a pink-skinned man with “stained yellow” hair, outlandishly colored clothing, a pocket watch two hours behind, and gloves with holes—is best friends with an apple tree named Sam. Clyde wishes to go to the moon. While pondering how to get there, he realizes he can’t share his “bread, cheese, and ham” sandwich with his “dear, good friend Sam” without some tricks. He digs a hole, buries the sandwich, and voilà: A staircase to the moon appears. Clyde travels up the staircase to meet the brown-skinned King of the Moon, encounters a talking table with a potion that affects a person’s size—reminiscent of Lewis Carroll—and returns to Sam with some magical lunar water. As in Kind and Pollitt’s earlier fable, The Story of Bluff (2018), the author’s rhymes are offbeat. They often fall into obvious patterns, but sometimes they leave readers searching for the rhyme. Pollitt’s geometric digital cartoon images are whimsical and surreal, emphasizing the oddness of the setting. They depict Clyde’s encounter with first the giant, brown-skinned Queen of the Moon (shown only at a distance) and then the tiny King of the Moon. But there’s no discernible moral to this story, and the tale never explains Clyde’s desire to travel to the moon or why a sandwich causes a staircase to materialize.

A strange, colorfully illustrated tale of magic and friendship that sometimes lacks clarity.