FROM THE PUBLISHER

This lunar guide describes the folkloric names of twelve moons according to Native American tradition and showcases their defining characteristics in short verse and beautifully detailed hand-colored woodcuts. A question-and-answer section includes information about the moon's surface, an explanation of a lunar eclipse, and the true meaning of a blue moon.

Author Biography: As a descendant of Wyandotte Indians, author Penny Pollock has a particular interest in Native American folklore. She lives with her husband in Brookside, New Jersey. Mary Azarian, the 1999 Caldecott Medal-winner for Snowflake Bentley, developed her own technique for printmaking on a nineteenth-century handpress. She lives in Calais, Vermont.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Azarian's (Snowflake Bentley) hand-painted woodcut prints provide evocative, haunting nature scenes for Pollock's (The Turkey Girl) eloquent poems in honor of each month's full moon. Each new spread reveals a spectacular nighttime vista; readers may well turn the pages as they would a calendar, pausing over the beauty of one scene, anticipating the next. Snow in February yields to sap buckets in March; raccoons feast on corn under the August moon while squirrels gather acorns on September nights. The poems vary in rhythm and mood, and are often arresting in their simplicity: "Lilies of the valley/ ring each silent bell/ when May's bright moon/ lightens up the dell"; in July, "Young bucks/ in the hayfield,/ antlers held aloft./ Moonbeams slanting down,/ show them velvet soft." Traditional Native American names for the moon serve as the poems' titles (January is the "The Wolf Moon") and a simple explanation follows: "Native Americans believed that wolves became restless in January." A concluding question-and-answer page provides additional information about the moon. This lovely volume will likely charm readers and inspire them to linger a bit longer under the night-time sky. Ages 4-8. (Sept.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Children's Literature

Traditional Native American names for the full moons of each month, from January to December, inspire brief poems that describe scenes from that time of year. The Snow Moon of February, for example, is "snuggling the world in downy white," while "December moon floats on cloud's crest..." The verses are set in double-page scenes that depict a moonlit rural landscape and its creatures. Azarian makes fine use of the woodcut medium's textures, as her chisels leave strands of uncut wood on the settings she designs for her engaging actors. Her subtle integration of transparent colors adds a range of emotional responses, from the chilly frosts of the Snow Moon to the warm tones of August's Green Corn Moon. Two pages of additional factual questions and answers about the moon are included. 2001, Little Brown, $15.95. Ages 4 to 8. Reviewer: Ken Marantz and Sylvia Marantz

School Library Journal

K-Gr 4-This delicate collection of poems offers a beautifully illustrated look at a year's worth of full moons. The Native American name for each moon is given, along with brief facts about it. An interesting question-and-answer section offers a variety of information about the moon itself, common misconceptions, and the truth about blue moons. Short and simple selections convey a variety of moods. For example, June is home to the strawberry moon, when "We feast all night/in moon's spotlight/forgetting all our foes,/tramping on the berries/that squish between our toes." The accompanying picture features three gleeful bears frolicking in the warm moon glow of a strawberry patch. Azarian's woodcuts are bathed in soothing blues, greens, and buttery yellows that entice readers to view this book outside under the moon's shadowy embrace.-Lisa Gangemi Krapp, Middle Country Public Library, Centereach, NY Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

The rhymed text doesn't match the power of Caldecott-winner Azarian's hand-colored woodcuts in this journey through the seasons. Each of Pollock's verses describes the scene: January is Wolf Moon, April is Frog Moon, December is Long Night Moon, and so on. Each verse is followed by a short sentence expanding on the poem's description, and that sometimes is absurdly self-evident: for May, the Flower Moon, "Many flowers bloom in May." The verses tend to thud and clunk along, and the author, a Wyandotte Indian descendant, refers consistently to Native Americans in her text as if they were a homogenous group. Question-and-answer pages at the end answer such questions as, "What is a blue moon?" Azarian's images are beautifully rendered, with an underlying strength to the patterns of flower, cornstalk, ripple, and leaf. A more engaging verbal treatment of this theme is Michael McCurdy's An Algonquian Year (2000); one would hate to choose between McCurdy's illustrations and Azarian's. (Picture book. 5-8)