#16 Catching the Moon

Catching the Moon
Author: Myla Goldberg
Illustrator: Chris Sheban
Arthur A. Levine Books  2007
37 Pages

Traditional

          I picked this book kup because of the artwork on the covver. I knew it would be something about nature. Once I opened it, I realized that one of the characters was the Man in the Moon. I actually grew up imagining there was a real man in the moon. It was just one of those innocent make-believe things children do. This made me somewhat relate to the book.
          In this book, the main character, the fisherwoman, went every night to the dock to fish and was always tired the next day. The Man in the Moon worried about her. He began to visit her and they became friends. She informed him that the reason her house was in bad shape was because the high tide came in and destroyed it, along with the rest of the homes in the fishing village. She had been fishing for the moon the entire time to keep it from bringing the high tide in.
          The mediums used by this illustrator are water color and prismacolor pencils on arches paper. The light depicted resembles Thomas Kinkade's artwork. The illustrations are mostly dark, since most of the setting is at night. Pretty purples, reds, and yellows are used to create great shadowing.
          I would choose this book for third grade and up. It has more advanced vocabulary and content, so the students need to be a little older to get the idea of what the story means.  
          This book would be great to kick off a science unit on the moon and its tides. It would be a good read-aloud to bring out interest in the subject amongst the students.