Through the Looking Glass Children's Book Reviews
A Kite for Moon
Illustrator: Matt Phelan
Picture Book
For ages 4 to 7
Zonderkidz, 2019 ISBN: 978-0310756422
Early one morning Moon floated in the sky all alone. The stars were gone and the people on Earth were ignoring her. No one was writing about her or singing to her. It was as if she was not even there.
Then one small boy, who was flying his kite on a beach, looked up and saw Moon. Even from such a distance the boy could tell that Moon was sad, and he tried to comfort her. He tried to get close to her, but the ocean was in the way. He tried to hug her, but she was just too far above him. Finally the little boy wrote a note on his kite. In his note he told Moon that he would come to visit her one day, and then he sent the kite up into the air as a gift for Moon.
Days, months, and years went by and Moon saw many extraordinary things. The boy from the beach looked at Moon through a telescope that his father had given him. And, when he could, he sent kites up to Moon. She, in turn, watched the boy grow up and become a young man. Neither one of them knew that one day that young man would keep the promise that he had made to Moon all those years ago.
In this homage to Neil Armstrong, and in honor of the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing, Jane Yolen and her daughter Heidi celebrate the dreams that children have, some of which end up coming true. Matt Phelan’s spare yet evocative illustrations compliment the beautifully written text to perfection.
