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A Full Moon is Rising

Review
By Booklist

In this picture-book collection, veteran children’s poet Singer offers a moving, informative “lunar journey” around the globe, starting with New York City’s “Broadway Moon,” which “waits behind skyscrapers / a brilliant actor in the wings.” On each spread, Singer creates an evocative verse vignette that suggests a whole story with only a few lines. In the Sahara, for example, a Moroccan boy gazes at the full moon from his tent and dreams of exploring it himself: “Astronauts less familiar with heat and dust / have walked there. / Why not one day / him?” In many selections, Singer neatly folds scientific information into the lyrical lines, as in a scene of ghostly divers moving silently over a reef as the coral prepare to spawn under the full moon. The human figures in Cairns’ watercolor images occasionally have a stiff, awkward quality, but the joyful colors and compositions echo the words’ celebratory tone. More lunar information opens and closes this creative choice for cross-curricular sharing that taps into the moon’s mysterious, aweinspiring allure.