THE BOY WHO CLIMBED INTO THE MOON

Roald Dahl meets Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in this delightfully improbable tale in which a previously unimaginative English boy named Paul surprises himself by declaring that the moon’s just a hole in the sky. Paul, who gets more inventive by the day, meets a cast of eccentric characters who eventually help him stretch a ladder to the moon from the roof of his 29-story apartment building. Ah ha! It is just a luminous receptacle, stuffed with errant projectiles that have inadvertently landed within: human cannonballs, pilots, airships, “anti-missile-missile missiles” and even pterodactyls. The language, reminiscent of The BFG, is a kick: The sky is “fizzy” and “flappy,” bombers are “lovely” but also “doomy.” While themes of loneliness, grief and the absurdity of war are explored, the tone is light (“Sausages are better than war!”), the dialogue snappy, the story fast-paced and satisfying. Madmen are heroes and crackpots are geniuses in this charmingly over-the-top read-aloud that challenges readers to imagine the impossible. Dunbar’s abundant full-color illustrations perfectly capture the beautiful barminess of it all. (Fable. 8-11)