Yellow Moon, Apple Moon


Another bedtime book starring the moon.  Yay. 

THREE PROS
*Relatively short and sweet -- a not terrible book to read once when trying to mix up the nighttime routine  
*To say I liked Matt James illustrations would be an overstatement, but they do lend themselves to Pamela Porter's text
*Porter has a real-life cat called Hobbes (which will forever be one of the three best names for a feline), thus proving she's not all bad

THREE CONS 
*I'm still waiting on an explanation for the whole apple moon thing 
*The moon is high in the sky in the middle of the book and then magically begins its ascent again a few pages later 
*Took a detour into angel country that I wasn't quite ready for -- others might disagree with me here

ONE DAD'S OPINION
YMAM goes all-in on the New Mexican lullaby "At the Gate of Heaven" by including references to it on the jacket, in the main body, on a separate lyrics page, and even scripted out musically.  If the song was so integral to the story, why didn't Porter just write an eight-pager that devoted half a leaf to each line?  Instead she chose to condense only the first half of the ditty onto three pages in the middle of everything.  [By the way, the song makes no mention of the word 'moon', yellow or otherwise.  I'd say this only adds to the confused state of affairs one experiences when reading YMAM.]  In short, it all feels just too scatterbrained for me; not to mention the potential wasn't that high to begin with.  If Kid Book Ratings was run more like NASA, this particular lunar mission would never get off the ground.  Donate.
    

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