Young children live in a world of unfettered imagination where anything is possible ... even the Moon moving into the empty house next door. In this delightful book, Stella, lonesome for a playmate, sees light shining from the windows of a neighboring, for-sale house. In the early morning, she crosses the lawn and sees the slender sliver of the Moon, out with an umbrella. They exchange hellos, and "after that day, they met quite often."
Like many childhood friends, their interests don't coincide. Tired of the boring barrenness of space, the Moon wants to grow things. Stella's passion is bugs, the mention of which causes the Moon to shrug. But nonetheless they can happily hang out near each other, easing their mutual loneliness. When the Moon quietly says that "up there, there's not even a blade of grass to talk to," Stella replies, "Well, you have a neighbor now." And the Moon beams.
Even at the story's start, you can sense the delicious whimsy, but it keeps getting better. Much of this is due to Sonia Sánchez's vibrant and lively illustrations, overflowing with flowers, stars, and quite a range of emotions, from the happiness of side-by-side friends to the panic of search parties scouting the skies for the missing Moon as tides refuse to go in and out and the Earth takes on "a new wobble." Newspapers carry headlines that will make adult readers smile: "Launch of an Artificial Moon Still Years Away" and "Harbor Officials Remove Tide Tables from Website."
And how does this all resolve without the new friends feeling utterly bereft? Well, we won't give too much away except to quote a later headline (just so you know all is okay in the end): "The Moon Was Never Gone, Astronomer Testifies."
Lest you worry about imagination having gone too far, the books' endpapers are full of scientific facts. For instance, the South Pole-Aitken basin crater is approximately 1,600 miles wide, roughly the distance from New York City to Dallas; and dung beetles use the Moon's light to scurry to safety.
Author Sue Soltis and Sonia Sánchez have outdone themselves. We predict that you and the young readers in your life (ages three to five) will be over the Moon about this book.
