Hello, Moon!

by Francesca Simon, Ben Cort (Illustrator)

Overview

Join a boy and the moon in a fun good night story!

In this perfect read-aloud story, a little boy warms up to the moon at bedtime. They have a sweet rapport, with the boy talking to the moon as if it were any other potential new friend.The boy asks the moon if it enjoys some of his favorite activities--and they share in some, like pretending to be pirates, together. But then the boy starts to think big. Can the moon see the city? Can the moon see the whole wide world? What are the moon's friends like? Soon the boy grows tired, says good night to the moon, and falls asleep.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780545652087
Publisher:	Scholastic, Inc.
Publication date:	05/27/2014
Sold by:	Scholastic, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	32
File size:	22 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	3 - 5 Years

About the Author

Francesca Simon is a graduate of Yale and Oxford and was a journalist before becoming a children's book writer. She is the author of the Horrid Henry series, which has sold over 19 million copies. She lives in London, England, with her family.
Ben Cort is the illustrator of ALIENS LOVE UNDERPANTS!, DINOSAURS LOVE UNDERPANTS!, and over fifty other children's books. He lives with his wife and children in Bedfordshire, England.

Editorial Reviews

04/14/2014
Bedtime can be lonely, even with a pet cat for company, so a boy decides to chat with the moon outside his window. His questions, and the imaginary play they inspire, range from quotidian (“Do you like chocolate ice cream?) to philosophical (he imagines Moon has a “billion, trillion gazillion” friends, “But they’re all so far away”). This is a sweet book, with lush, dense acrylics—Cort’s gorgeously blue night sky makes every other color glow—and a comforting message that even a literal dark night of the soul will give way to a more confident sense of self (“I’m here” the boy tells the moon before drifting off, “Anytime you want to talk”). But despite the conceit, Simon (the Horrid Henry books) and Cort (Aliens Love Underpants!) don’t make the Moon much of a focal point. When the boy wonders whether the Moon likes to pretend it’s a pirate, it dons an eye patch, but most of the time it’s absent from the boy’s reveries altogether or a placidly smiling figure in the sky, more distantly maternal than buddy-buddy. Ages 3–5. (June)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for Ben Cort

ALIENS LOVE PANTA CLAUS (by Claire Freedman and Ben Cort)
"The playful rhyming text, bright colors, and cheerful alien creatures (along with many mentions and pictures of underwear, of course) will have children giggling, guaranteed." --CHILDREN'S LITERATURE

ALIENS IN UNDERPANTS SAVE THE WORLD (by Claire Freedman and Ben Cort)
"The rhyming text and illustrations turn this into a comic delight." --BOOKLIST

From the Publisher

05/01/2014
PreS-Gr 1—A young, smiling boy sees the full moon outside his bedroom window and asks if it likes the same things he does—bouncing on his bed, going down "the twisty, turny slide" at the park, eating chocolate ice cream, and playing pirates. He asks if the moon can "see the city…under the sea…the highest mountain…[and] the whole wide world." On a spread of children playing on a grassy hill in the moonlight, he asks, "Do you have lots of friends, Moon?" The next spread shows the boy flying through space in the "Milky Way" near the constellations Leo, Pegasus, and Little Bear. The boy returns to Earth and bids his friend "Good night." Cheerful, acrylic cartoon illustrations depict the action on single pages and full spreads. There are plenty of picture books out there about the moon and the wonders of the natural world, and there's nothing particularly engaging about this one. Eric Carle's Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me (S & S., 1986), Liz Garton Scanlon's lyrical All the World (S. & S., 2009) and Deborah Diesen's The Pout-Pout Fish in the Big-Big Dark (Farrar, 2010) are better choices.—Laura Scott, Farmington Community Library, MI

School Library Journal

2014-03-03
Children who have their own bedrooms must face that moment each night when they feel utterly alone; the time before sleep may seem endless. This thoughtful young protagonist strikes up a conversation with the moon: "Can we talk? I get lonely down here sometimes. What I want to know is…." His questions run the gamut from the moon's taste in games, food and animals to its range of vision. Can the smiling countenance see inside people's homes or into the ocean's depths? Reflecting on his own situation, the boy wonders if the moon has friends—and, in a kindly gesture, offers to listen anytime. Composed with an abundance of reassuring, rounded shapes and images high on the child-appeal scale (pirates, ice cream cones, playgrounds), Cort's acrylic scenes contrast the predominately cool, blue nighttime environment with a variety of warm greens punctuated by bursts of orange. Prominent among these is the child's striped cat, which appears as a playful and comforting presence throughout, and the identically colored tiger who saunters out of the bushes when named as a favorite. The questions Simon has her protagonist pose—by turns spirited, playful and genuinely sweet—signal understanding of and respect for a child's emotional and intellectual capacities. Judging from all the childhood insomnia out there, there can never be too many bedtime stories, especially when they model a strategy as successful as this one. (Picture book. 3-6)

Kirkus Reviews