Mae and the Moon

PreS-K—Little Mae loves the moon, looking for it in the sky every night. She thinks of the orb as her playmate, as she tries to catch it, howls at it, or plays hide-and-seek with it in the park. As time goes by, Mae notices that the moon keeps getting thinner, until one night it disappears completely. Devastated, Mae asks her mom if her friend will return, only to be told, "Even moons need to rest." Not satisfied with this explanation, Mae and her dad build a cardboard rocket that reunites Mae and the moon…in her imagination. While Mae plays with the rocket, the real moon comes back; in the happy conclusion of the story, the moon's thin crescent smiles through the window upon the sleeping Mae. Gigot's digitally colored pencil illustrations perfectly capture the calm lunar glow over the nocturnal blues and purples of a sleepy town, setting up a stark contrast of darkness in the spread when the moon is absent. Their cartoonish style is sweetly humorous, especially in portraying Mae's real companion—a little white dog. Front and back endpapers feature the phases of the moon.