By Light of the Captured Moon

by Julian Scheer, Ronald Himler (Illustrator)

The night before school starts, Billy Whee tries to hold onto the fun he and his friends have been having by capturing the last full moon of summer and trying to hide it in his bedroom.

Genres: Picture Books

32 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 2001

Reviews

[Catherine · Rating 1 out of 5]

I thought about giving this book 2 stars because the pictures are beautiful, but the story has too many problems to rate it that high. This story seems to have issues knowing what it us about - is it about fireflies or a fantasy of capturing the moon? This book tries to do both - neither of them well.

The sentences are often long - huge and wordy and not fun to read to a child. The part of the story about capturing the moon could have been darling, but it was wrecked with wordy. Children's books need to focus on limiting word choices as much as poetry does. I read this to my granddaughter, and she didn't want it read again, nor did she want to borrow it.

There is a sentence in this book that is a paragraph long - seriously - remove 90% of the prepositional phrases; focus on one part of the story and it could work.

[Desiree Tarpeo · Rating 5 out of 5]

We read this during our story time last night, and my kiddo loved it! The idea of being able to reach out his arms through the window and pulling down the moon into his bedroom really tickled him! Plus, he loved the illustrations of the kids catching lightning bugs at night and now wants to try that (we live in Oregon - no lightning bugs here).