Amazon.com Review
"And if the moon could talk, / it would tell of evening / stealing through the woods / and a lizard scurrying home to supper." Kate Banks and illustrator Georg Hallensleben's lovely bedtime book spins a sleepy tale of what the moon would say if it could look down at a night-swept Earth and tell us what it sees. The book begins with a cozy inside view of a little pajama-clad girl and her stuffed white rabbit. Then we travel outside to a moon's view of the night world. Back inside, from the familiar objects on the bedside table--"a glass, a wooden boat, a starfish, too"--we move to "waves washing onto the beach, / shells, and a crab resting." Each rich,
color-drenched scene complements the next--as Mama hands her child the toy rabbit, a lioness licks her cubs in a faraway den. "And if the moon could talk," the book concludes, "it would tell of a child / curled up in bed wrapped in sleep. / And it would murmur / Good night." From the creators of the beloved
Baboon and
Spider, Spider, this beautiful book--winner of the 1998 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for best picture book--has become one of our all-time favorite bedtime stories. (Click to see a
sample spread. Illustrations copyright © 1998 by Georg Hallensleben, text © 1998 by Kate Banks. Reprinted by permission of the publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux.) (Ages 3 and older)
--Karin Snelson
From Publishers Weekly
With quiet phrases and luxurious color, Banks and Hallensleben (Baboon) evoke a perfectly peaceful bedtime. In a stuccoed house, amid tranquil lakes and orderly rows of trees, a girl plays with stuffed animals and listens to a story read by her father. Far away, the moon glows on tall hills, desert, jungle and ocean, where people and wild animals prepare for sleep. Full-bleed spreads expertly relate the text's alternating descriptions of relaxed interior and exterior scenes. In the child's bedroom "on a small table sits a glass, a wooden boat, a starfish, too." Hallensleben connects the spread that follows, "if the moon could talk, it would tell of waves washing onto the beach, shells, and a crab resting," with a painting of boats bobbing on a tranquil sea, whose color gently echoes the water glass on the bedside table of the previous spread. The story closes with the child tucked into bed and the moon whispering, "Good night." Hallensleben complements the hushed narrative with warm cushions of paint: the girl's thick blanket is egg-yolk yellow with orange-red dots and the pillows are as deep blue as the night sky. The outdoor panoramas have the same intimacy, whether they feature a lioness and her cubs, or a red tractor lumbering toward a yellow-lit farmhouse. As night gently envelops the landscapes, the words and art convey the snug warmth of a featherbed and a world as small as a neighborhood. Ages 3-5.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
