A WAVE OF STARS

What could be more magical than a moonbow?

Mimbi the seal and Kipo the sea turtle hear an amazing and terrifying legend from a storytelling octopus: Any sea creature gazing at the rare glow becomes human! Playing beneath the waves, the young friends are caught unawares by a storm. When they poke their heads through the water, a moonbow stretches overhead. Their miraculous transformations into children include clothing and the ability to speak in the tongue of a kindly white fisherman, who knows the legend and takes them home when he finds them on the beach. They want to return to their former selves, but the only means of accomplishing this, says the fisherman, is to swim beneath a wave of stars. This fable demands a huge suspension of disbelief. Brown glosses over the trauma of the transformation in three sentences. White-presenting Mimbi and black-presenting Kipo somehow understand human behaviors as well as language. Also, two rare phenomena, the moonbow and the wave of stars, conveniently occur within 24 hours. Wimmer seamlessly combines black-and-white sketches with sweet full-color spreads, helping to bridge many of the story’s gaps. The best element isn’t even a character in the story—it’s Mimbi’s triton-grasping mer-king doll. Readers will be charmed by the subtle changes in the mer-king’s expressions. A Spanish-language edition translated by Luis Amavisca will release simultaneously.

A slight “Little Mermaid”–esque tale with an abrupt, less-than satisfying ending.