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Music for Mister Moon

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Music for Mister Moon

Hardcover

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Hardcover
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Overview

A shy musician makes an unexpected friend in this beautiful picture book from an award-winning duo.

A Great Lakes Great Reads Award Children's Picture Book Winner

A girl named Harriet longs to play her cello alone in her room. But when a noisy owl disrupts her solitude, Harriet throws her teacup out the window in frustration, and accidentally knocks the moon out of the sky.

Over the course of an evening, Harriet and the moon become fast friends. Worried that he'll catch a chill, Harriet buys the moon a soft woolen hat, then takes him on a boat ride across a glistening lake, something he's only dreamed of. But can she work up the courage to play her music for the moon?

In this delicate bedtime story about a shy young cello player who learns to share her music with the moon, the award-winning Philip and Erin Stead deliver another whimsical, visually oriented picture book in their signature style.

The duo of Philip and Erin Stead are "one of the most notable names in children's literature" -ABC News

A BookPage Best Book of the Year
A Bank Street Best Book of the Year - Outstanding Merit

Product Details
About the Author

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780823441600
Publisher:	Holiday House
Publication date:	03/26/2019
Pages:	40
Sales rank:	458,484
Product dimensions:	7.40(w) x 11.20(h) x 0.40(d)
Lexile:	480L (what's this?)
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

ERIN and PHILIP STEAD are an award-winning picture book team. Their book A Sick Day for Amos McGee (400,000 plus copies sold to date) won the Caldecott Medal and was named a New York Times Best Illustrated Book and a Publisher's Weekly Best Children's Book. Other popular books include Bear Has a Story to Tell, an E. B White Award Honor Book. Most recently they collaborated with Mark Twain on The Purloining of Prince Oleomargarine, a major New York Times Bestseller and the recipient of much major media attention including profiles on CBS Sunday Morning and The New Yorker. They live in Michigan.

From the B&N Reads Blog

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March’s Best New Picture Books

Can we offer some hibernation advice? Don’t let the Arctic breezes and black ice get you down—nurture those daydreams of rosebuds and baby bunnies instead! Yes, we’ve rounded up our favorite stories again this month, and we guarantee they’ll get your little ones bounding into the garden as soon as you emerge from your cozy […]

02/20/11
A girl named Harriet accidentally knocks the moon out of the sky in this story by the Caldecott Award–winning Steads. He’s a round, lemony globe with a kindly expression who dreams of not being the moon; she takes him rowing on a lake (which he’s always wanted to do), then carries him home into the sky with the help of some owls and a fishing net. But the tale is perhaps better understood as a portrait of Harriet, a solemn, solitary child with a long braid who loves to play the cello but hates to be watched. “Someday you will play your cello in a big orchestra,” her parents say. “Won’t that make you happy?” Harriet retreats to a secret place in her mind: “Then she closed her eyes and changed her parents into penguins.” The fine lines of Erin Stead’s pencil drawings introduce readers to Harriet’s inner life, where the wishes of her parents and the glare of the world can’t intrude. It’s a deep, almost reverent look at how a child can use her imagination to create not just the world she wants, but the world she needs. Ages 4–8. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

★ "In making amends for a thoughtless act, a shy young cellist finds just the right audience. . . . The illustrations, as spare and harmonious as the prose, are pale constructs of lightly applied pencil over misty ink monoprints . . . A low-key, atmospheric encounter a-glimmer with verbal and visual grace notes."—Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review

★ "a gift for the eyes and a delight for the imagination. Encore, please." —Booklist, Starred Review

★ "The award-winning Steads who are best known for their Caldecott Medal book A Sick Day for Amos McGee are back with a delightful picture book in their signature style. The soft and dreamlike illustrations done with oil based monoprinting on a sheet of acrylic and are the perfect accompaniment to the simple and thoughtful prose as they work in harmony to bring Harriet’s dream to the pages. A gentle bedtime story that is recommended for all." —School Library Journal, Starred Review

★ "Caldecott medalist Erin Stead's layers of oil ink and colored pencil weave a translucent moonlit spell around the graphite-sketched characters, including a thick-furred bear in a trapper hat and an upright, pot-bellied walrus. Introverts and dreamers ages four to nine will gravitate to Philip Stead's wistful Mister Moon, who thinks oars moving through the water and buoy bells are music compared to the quiet sky. Subtle and whimsical, Music for Mister Moon celebrates the peace that grows between trusted friends."—Shelf Awareness, Starred Review

"Erin Stead's prints, embellished with colored pencil and graphite, use point of view to create perceptual distance while simultaneously establishing a close emotional connection."—The Horn Book

"The fine lines of Erin Stead’s pencil drawings introduce readers to Harriet’s inner life, where the wishes of her parents and the glare of the world can’t intrude. It’s a deep, almost reverent look at how a child can use her imagination to create not just the world she wants, but the world she needs."—Publishers Weekly

"With a superb balance between text and art, Music for Mister Moon is a vivid journey into a child’s nuanced inner world." —BookPage

From the Publisher

★ 05/01/2019
PreS-Gr 2—What if you threw your teacup out the window and it accidentally knocked the moon out of the sky? All Harriet wants to do is practice her cello alone in her room. While she prepares to play, she imagines her room is a little house with a kitchen table, a teacup, and a fireplace. But each time she attempts to begin playing, she is repeatedly interrupted by a loud hooting owl. In attempts to make the owl quiet down, Harriet (who goes by Hank) throws her teacup out the window and into the night! The owl flies away but soon Harriet realizes that she has knocked the moon from the sky and into her chimney. After helping him out of the chimney, the shy musician and Mr. Moon adventure into the night and do many things including finding the perfect hat for Mr. Moon and even enjoying a midnight boat ride. Harriet has made amends for her mistake, but will she work up the courage to play music for her new friend? The award-winning Steads who are best known for their Caldecott Medal book A Sick Day for Amos McGee are back with a delightful picture book in their signature style. The soft and dreamlike illustrations done with oil based monoprinting on a sheet of acrylic and are the perfect accompaniment to the simple and thoughtful prose as they work in harmony to bring Harriet's dream to the pages. VERDICT A gentle bedtime story that is recommended for all.—Elizabeth Blake, Brooklyn Public Library

School Library Journal

★ 2019-01-28
In making amends for a thoughtless act, a shy young cellist finds just the right audience.
So afflicted with performance anxiety that her parents' mere suggestion that she might play in an orchestra one day makes her flushed and sweaty, Harriet Henry retreats to her room and transforms it into a small, isolated house in which she can practice unheard. But when the teacup she throws through a window to silence an annoying owl knocks the moon down from the sky, Harriet—introducing herself, with a deft bit of gender fluidity, as "Hank"—makes a wagon and responds to the wishes of "Mister Moon" by wheeling him first to the hat maker (a bear) for a warm hat, then down to the lake to listen to water and a distant bell buoy ("There is so much music down below," he comments. "It is so quiet up in the sky"), then finally back to the sky to play for the moon, who has promised not to cheer or even watch. The illustrations, as spare and harmonious as the prose, are pale constructs of lightly applied pencil over misty ink monoprints featuring a large, gently glowing moon with human features, a comically tiny wagon, and a serious-looking, pigtailed child (white, like her parents) barely if at all taller than her instrument. The ability of Harriet/Hank to remake her surroundings at will not only enhances the episode's dreamlike quality, but should also strike a chord in retiring or introspective readers.
A low-key, atmospheric encounter a-glimmer with verbal and visual grace notes. (Picture book. 6-9)

Kirkus Reviews

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