Long Night Moon
Cynthia Rylant, Mark SiegelBooks.org participates in affiliate programs including Bookshop.org and the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.
Overview
Have you ever stopped to consider what might be revealed in one spot over one year by twelve unique and exquisite full moons?
Text and illustrations depict the varied seasonal full moons that change and assume personalities of their own throughout the year.
Synopsis
Have you ever stopped to consider what might be revealed in one spot over one year by twelve unique and exquisite full moons?
Publishers Weekly
Rylant's (When I Was Young in the Mountains) lilting prose-poetry, with sometimes only a few words per page, introduces the traditional Native American name for each month's full moon: "In April/ the Sprouting Grass Moon brings/ all wanderers back home./ Baby birds love this moon./ It lights their tiny heads." In a dramatic departure from his boisterous Seadogs, Siegel uses charcoal, pencil and pastels in full-bleed spreads that present the full moon as at times haunting, and at other times a large, joyful night-lamp, showering fields and forest in transluscent light. Siegel introduces human characters on the half-title page (a mother and child), seen only in silhouette. The spreads follow a single rural landscape around 360 degrees of the horizon, with the moon rising at a different compass point every month. June's Strawberry Moon bathes the landscape in a soft pink halo, August's Harvest Moon in lavender. The garden of a small house gives way to an overgrown pasture, a plowed field, a barn and a silo and, in December, back to the garden again. There, the same mother who stood outside with her baby admiring January's Stormy Moon stands there again, at year's end, looking at December's Long Night Moon, her baby visibly larger. Like a lullaby, this album of full moons offers gentle comfort at bedtime. Ages 3-6. (Dec.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Editorials
Publishers Weekly
Rylant's (When I Was Young in the Mountains) lilting prose-poetry, with sometimes only a few words per page, introduces the traditional Native American name for each month's full moon: "In April/ the Sprouting Grass Moon brings/ all wanderers back home./ Baby birds love this moon./ It lights their tiny heads." In a dramatic departure from his boisterous Seadogs, Siegel uses charcoal, pencil and pastels in full-bleed spreads that present the full moon as at times haunting, and at other times a large, joyful night-lamp, showering fields and forest in transluscent light. Siegel introduces human characters on the half-title page (a mother and child), seen only in silhouette. The spreads follow a single rural landscape around 360 degrees of the horizon, with the moon rising at a different compass point every month. June's Strawberry Moon bathes the landscape in a soft pink halo, August's Harvest Moon in lavender. The garden of a small house gives way to an overgrown pasture, a plowed field, a barn and a silo and, in December, back to the garden again. There, the same mother who stood outside with her baby admiring January's Stormy Moon stands there again, at year's end, looking at December's Long Night Moon, her baby visibly larger. Like a lullaby, this album of full moons offers gentle comfort at bedtime. Ages 3-6. (Dec.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.Children's Literature
The Native American practice of giving names to the year's cycle of full moons ("Each month had a moon./And each moon had its name") is the inspiration for Rylant and Siegel's beautiful collaborative homage to the full moon in all its moods and majesty. January's Stormy Moon "shines in mist,/ in ice,/on a wild wolf's back. . . Find it/ and find your way home." February's Snow Moon misses "its sister, the Sun." March's Sap Moon "tells a promise/and a hope." And so on through the year, until December's Long Night Moon "waits/and/waits/and waits/for morning. . . This is the faithful moon. This moon is your friend." Siegel's haunting charcoal renderings of each moon perfectly match Rylant's spare, lyrical text. As Siegel writes, in a fascinating illustrator's note describing his search, through many moonlit walks, for the right artistic medium, his use of charcoal captures "that velvety mysterious light that softens everything, bathing nature in a dreamy luminosity." This is a book that will send children and parents out on magical nighttime rambles to share the silent enchantment that Rylant and Siegel celebrate here. 2004, Simon & Schuster, Ages 3 to 6.—Claudia Mills, Ph.D.