Review by Booklist Review
Sophia is running away to live on the moon (i.e., under the kitchen table), where there are no time-outs and no one yells if she breaks something. She's taken Mr. Wubbles the cat and won't come back, no matter what. Sure, her mom may try to tempt her with letters about the cookies and spaghetti and bedtime stories she's missing, but Sophia's too busy riding moonicorns and drinking starlight soup and asteroid tea. Although, maybe by bedtime she misses her mom just a tad. This lovely, funny, tender story exhibits incredibly clever storytelling, starting on the illustrated title page. Told through handwritten letters between Sophia and her mother, and supported by Song's watercolors in comforting nighttime purples and blues, this tale allows for both imagination and speculation as the story progresses. It's terrific for representation of both cultural and family diversity, and it has excellent altruistic and guilt-free messaging about how a parent can get upset with a child but still love them quite literally to the moon and back.--Becca Worthington Copyright 2020 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
This epistolary story opens with Sophia sitting in a time-out that she is not going to take lying down. In her first letter following the incident, she informs her mother that she's headed to the moon with her orange cat, Mr. Wubbles. "Don't try to stop me," she writes. "Oh no!" Mom replies. "That's a shame. I was about to make cookies. Now who will lick the beater?" Sophia frolics in Song's (Ho'onani Hula Warrior) purple-hued lunar landscape, dancing through the sky with floating "moonicorns." But when Mom announces that she's found a new occupant for Sophia's bed--a moon kid named Grorg--her daughter begins to show signs of homesickness beneath her enthusiastic exterior. Gradually, the clever, unhurried parent wins her daughter back--but, in a nice twist, is willing to meet Sophia right where she is, both emotionally and spatially. Text by Rissi (Watch Out for Wolf!) gently portrays the stubborn flight and the resulting plight of a frustrated child, and a mother whose measured responses and funny nuggets of rhetoric show that she loves her child to the moon--and "all the way back." Ages 3--5. Author's agent: Meredith Kaffel Simonoff, DeFiore & Co. Illustrator's agent: Erica Rand Silverman, Stimola Literary Studio. (Mar.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Life is not fair on Earth, so Sophia runs away to the moon.When young Sophia is put in timeout, she decides to head for the moon. Leaving a note for her mom, she boards a rocket with her cat, Mr. Wubbles. In letters home to her mom, Sophia shares all the great things about the moon: a new friend they've made, riding moonicorns, having no bedtime, and eating starlight soup. Her mom writes letters back, making subtle comments trying to convince Sophia to come home. She tells Sophia she's making cookies, then she offers the cows that jump over the moon Sophia's bed to sleep in, and finally she invites Grorg, a moon runaway, to have spaghetti and stay the night. Sophia eventually invites her mom to bring Grorg back to the moon, thinking he might be moonsick, leading to a happy reunion. Related exclusively in the series of letters between Sophia and her mom, this is a gentle, even adorable reminder for children that their parent still loves them even if they yell. Song's illustrations, figures drawn with her characteristically thick, smudgy black line, add a bounty of extra details to the story, especially in the pictures of Sophia's mom at home, with glimpses into Sophia's room. The gentle, pastel colors of the moon add to the sweetness of this mother-daughter reconciliation story. Mom and daughter both have tan skin and straight, black hair; Sophia's eyebrows are fabulously emphatic.Readers will love it to the moon and back. (Picture book. 3-5) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
