MOON

An overscheduled kid gets a taste of the wild life of wolves and brings some of it back home.

Moon is a young girl with a long list of to-dos, including homework, trumpet lessons, “stuff and more stuff.…Moon always did it all. But she wondered what it would be like not to.” Moon tries to learn what it would be like to be wild in books, but that’s a dead end. Instead, she wanders out one night and befriends a benign pack of wolves. She asks them to show her “the wolfy ways,” leading to pouncing, playing, and, of course, howling. It’s exactly what one would expect, as Moon learns the value of being wild once in a while, which she brings back to her school, to the enjoyment (and participation) of classmates. But one passage resonates and stands apart from the rest, on a double-page spread in which Moon and a wolf calmly meditate, their images reflected in a pool of water, and Moon learns “How to be still, how to listen and feel.” The delicate illustrations, which have a dreamlike quality in their glowing whites and luminous pastels (not to mention Moon’s purple skin), suggest that this may be a dream, but what Moon learns is not.

Convincingly and sweetly told, Moon’s story is a striking authorial debut from illustrator Oliver.