Synopsis
Clair-de-Lune lives with her grandmother in the tippy-top of a peculiar old building. Every day she practices ballet, just like her mother before her—the famous ballerina who died when Clair-de-Lune was just a baby. Since that day, Clair-de-Lune hasn’t uttered a word.
Then one day the girl who cannot speak meets a remarkable mouse who can. Bonaventure dreams of founding a dancing school just for mice—but he dreams of helping his new friend, too. Soon the brave little mouse introduces Clair-de-Lune to a hidden world inside, and yet somehow beyond, her building—a world that slowly begins to open her heart. Maybe one day her dreams will come true, too.
UmaKrishnaswami - Children's Literature
This delicately blended tale exists on the borders of many worlds—ballet and everyday life, love and fear, and most of all, silence and sound. In fact, the "weight of things unsaid" drives the story of twelve-year-old Clair-de-Lune, who cannot speak. She is the daughter of a great ballerina who danced the most beautiful dance of her career and never rose from her final pas seul. Had she died trying to say something? With light touches Golds evokes both mystery and compassion, setting the stage for the girl who cannot speak to meet a mouse who can. The charming mouse characters are reminiscent of George Selden's whimsical animals. Where else would a brilliant deaf mouse live but in a church organ? How does a mouse choreographer address that troublesome matter of the tail? And what else could you possibly call a pair of mice who live in a print shop, but Leonard and Virginia? And yet we also find here a textured darkness reminiscent of DiCamillo's Despereaux, as well as of older narratives, such as the more tragic tales penned by Hans Christian Andersen. Clair-de-Lune takes place in a world both child-sized and emotionally large. The building in which the girl and her grandmother live has unsuspected dimensions. The mice in her world have unsuspected depths, and a monk, Brother Inchmahone, with unerring insights and his own secret sorrow, is a kindly yet unobtrusive ally. Golds has a gentle storytelling voice that nonetheless carries great conviction. She speaks directly to the child reader, striking a balance between surprise and prediction that allows for grief, yet leads to a satisfying ending. 2006, Knopf/Random House, and Ages 8 to 12.