Moon: A Peek-Through Picture Book

Reviewed by: Jill O'Connor - Harriet Beecher Stowe Elementary School, Brunswick, Southern Maine Library District

Review Date: June 11, 2018

Review

The third of Teckentrup's peek-through books (Tree and Bee), this title is another vehicle for Teckentrup's gorgeous illustrations. And they are stunning, showing animals in different landscapes under the light of the moon, using shadow and light. But this title suffers from uninspired rhyming text and a few scientific errors that keep it from being higher rated. The flow of the book shows a waxing gibbous, goes to a full moon, has a new moon tossed in, and then goes to a waning gibbous, but this is not the correct order of the phases of the moon; unfortunately, the need for a design element supplanted the science. On the page with the puffins, it mentions the northern lights, but it would be tough to see the northern lights with as much moon in the photo, if there are even any northern lights in Teckentrup's illustration. On the page of the full moon, turtles are shown coming up on land to lay eggs, but the turtles do not have flippers so they are land turtles, not sea turtles. This book dances between the line of nonfiction and fiction and since it is directly about the moon, it would benefit from an author's note about the phases of the moon and the liberty taken due to design. Pick this one up for your bedtime stories collection and enjoy the way that Teckentrup succeeds in getting her two-dimensional moon to glow; that is strength of this one.

Overall Book Score: good