#18

The Man in the Moon
William Joyce
Atheneum Books for Young Readers
2011
48 pages

Fantasy

“Nightlight, bright light,
Sweet dreams I bestow.
Sleep tight, all night.
Forever I will glow.”

            I chose this book because of the beautiful illustration on the front cover. This is the story of the Man in the Moon, or MiM for short. MiM’s parents live with him on the ship, the Moon Clipper. Nightlight was devoted to watching over MiM at night to protect him from nightmares. One night, Pitch, the King of Nightmares, decided to give MiM and his parents a visit. MiM’s parents tell Nightlight to go hide with MiM and protect him from Pitch. Nightlight stabs Pitch with a diamond dagger and there is a blinding flash. At that point, MiM begins to call out for his parents, but they do not answer him. MiM sees a new group of stars in the sky; it was his mother and father. Each night, MiM crawled on the back of a Lunar Moth to fly around the moon and to see his parents’ constellation. As MiM gets older, he realizes that there are children on Earth. He receives the balloons that children on earth had lost, and listened to their dreams inside the balloon. Some dreams were of toys or candy, so MiM contacts Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, Mother Goose, and other creatures to send to Earth to see the children. Although the children were happy with the gifts, they were still afraid of the dark. He wanted his friends of Earth to have a friend like Nightlight. MiM kicked rocks around the moon while he thought of a plan. The sand had made the moon much brighter, and the children of Earth could see the moon’s smiling face. MiM would be a guardian of the children of Earth, just like Nightlight had been his guardian.

            This book has a beautiful single image cover of MiM riding on the back of a blue lunar moth. There is gold foil lettering on the front cover as well. On the endpapers and flyleaf are all of the characters within the book, and the process of the Moon Clipper changing from a ship into the moon. The title page has a blue double page spread of the Moon Clipper ship and the title. The text placement is most formal, and some of the text boxes have bold borders around them. There are a lot of shades of blue used in the illustrations to represent space. The illustrations in this book are rendered in multimedia. There is a map on the last two pages of the book of the journeys and adventures of the Man in the Moon.

            This book is appropriate for anyone to read. In the classroom, I would use this book when introducing the genre of fantasy. This is a great example of a make-believe story that could never really take place. A teacher could also use this book for a science lesson when talking about the moon. Although this is a fiction story, you could talk about the myth that there is a face on the moon. This book may be difficult to incorporate in the classroom because it would be hard to relate to.

            This book has not been awarded any medals or honors. I would recommend this book to anyone. It was a great story to read.