Review by Booklist Review
Gr. 2-4, younger for reading aloud. Long ago Native Americans gave names to the full moons they watched throughout the year. Taking off from this premise, Rylant's lyrical prose moves month by month, the words placed against melting nighttime skies. In January, it's a Stormy Moon, in mist, / in ice, / on a wild wolf's back. In May, a Flower Moon blooms wide open, bright. By November, the Frosty Moon holds a hard ground, / empty trees, / the wind in lonely places. It shivers with the shining stars / It thinks it might / just / sleep. The deceptively easy phrasings strike a chord; even when the words are joyful, there's still a poignant undertone. Siegel explains in a note that he spent many hours walking around at night to capture the astonishing and complex face nature reveals at night. And capture it he does, in shades of blue, green, purple, gray, and black, creating nights that shelter life and harbor the moon--in all its permutations. --Ilene Cooper Copyright 2004 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Rylant's (When I Was Young in the Mountains) lilting prose-poetry, with sometimes only a few words per page, introduces the traditional Native American name for each month's full moon: "In April/ the Sprouting Grass Moon brings/ all wanderers back home./ Baby birds love this moon./ It lights their tiny heads." In a dramatic departure from his boisterous Seadogs, Siegel uses charcoal, pencil and pastels in full-bleed spreads that present the full moon as at times haunting, and at other times a large, joyful night-lamp, showering fields and forest in transluscent light. Siegel introduces human characters on the half-title page (a mother and child), seen only in silhouette. The spreads follow a single rural landscape around 360 degrees of the horizon, with the moon rising at a different compass point every month. June's Strawberry Moon bathes the landscape in a soft pink halo, August's Harvest Moon in lavender. The garden of a small house gives way to an overgrown pasture, a plowed field, a barn and a silo and, in December, back to the garden again. There, the same mother who stood outside with her baby admiring January's Stormy Moon stands there again, at year's end, looking at December's Long Night Moon, her baby visibly larger. Like a lullaby, this album of full moons offers gentle comfort at bedtime. Ages 3-6. (Dec.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
PreS-Gr 2-Books this good come along once in a blue moon. Rylant opens this radiant offering by explaining: "Long ago Native Americans gave names to the full moons they watched throughout the year. Each month had a moon. And each moon had a name...." The two-page illustration shows a woman holding a baby and looking at the nighttime sky. Scenes of their house and the surrounding countryside accompany the 12 poems that follow, beginning with January and tracing the cycle of the year. To read the text is to be bathed in the magic of moonlight, magic extended by Siegel's luminous charcoal, pencil, and pastel landscapes. February's picture is stark and cold; a solitary stag, his breath a white cloud, stands by an icicle-shrouded bear den. The stag appears again in March as does the den without the icicles, and the painting glows with green tones: "a Sap Moon rises/over/melting ponds,/sleepy bears,/small green trees./It tells a promise/and a hope." The woman and the now-older child reappear at the end and again gaze at the orb from their garden gazebo: "And in December/the Long Night Moon waits/and waits/and waits/for morning./This/is the faithful moon./This one is your friend." Savor this thoughtful book, and pair it with Jane Yolen's Owl Moon (Philomel, 1987) for a lyrical bedtime read-aloud.-Kathleen Whalin, York Public Library, ME (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
Long ago Native Americans / gave names to the full moons.+ This lyrical poem gives every moon its own personality: for example, the Thunder Moon of July +trembles, / shudders, / and disappears / in a thick black sky.+ The spare words shine as brightly as the moon on the charcoal and pastel panoramic rural scenes. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Rylant takes the evocative trope of the First Peoples' naming of the full moons of the year and turns it into a quiet meditation on time and nature. Siegel is just in tune with her words, his charcoal, pencil and pastel drawings fill the pages with shadows, each lit by a brilliant full moon. He pans around a rural setting: a gazebo with a mother and child, a house with a single bright window, huge old trees, fields, fence, road. Month by month, readers see moonlight picking out a particular thing: skunks' white stripes or the tips of new grasses. These lovely images echo Rylant's gentle prose: "In April / the Sprouting Grass Moon brings / all wanderers back home. / Baby birds love this moon. / It lights their tiny heads." In each spread, while Siegel evokes landscape and fauna in deep blues, grays, black and brown, the moon looms with an unearthly glow. The Long Night Moon is December's: "The faithful moon. / This one is your friend," whispers the mother into the hair of her babe, as they stand in the gazebo wrapped in woolies and stars once again. (Picture book. 4-8) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
