20th July International Moon Day

International Moon Day marks the anniversary of the first landing by humans on the Moon as part of the Apollo 11 lunar mission. This is an important event to commemorate, but I have done a blog entry on it before. I want to look at how else the moon appears in children's picture books. It is often personified and the reader gets to hear how it feels. It is also often associated with magic and night mischief.

Today I want to look at three moon stories that I love sharing with students where the moon has a very different role from being a place that astronauts visit. Rather it is something awe-inspiring, magical and even endearing.

1. Happy Birthday, Moon  by Frank Asch. Students love the fact that they have knowledge that the main character, Moonbear does not have. Some even shout out while I am reading to tell you that Moonbear doesn't understand how the moon works. Then when it comes to the echoing parts they have even more to say. It is a good example of the reader having the power, not the author or the main character.

2. Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me by Eric Carle. It is Monica's wish to have the moon play with her and her papa tries to get it for her, not an easy task, but one a father tries in order to please his daughter. The paper engineering works with the suspense of the story and keeps the reader invested in the outcome. This book gets tatty in a library very quickly because of the pages that open outward and upward, but we replace it regularly so it can be loved all over again.

3. Ace Dragon Ltd by Russell Hoban and Quentin Blake. When I first read this book to a class, I had a small reader-size book which was mainly black and white, but nevertheless the story worked a treat. Years later  it was republished in a bigger format and with more colour. This made it even easier to maintain the students interest in the sword-wielding John and a dragon named Ace when they venture off into space. They land on the moon and have quite a quandary to solve.

Four well loved author illustrators, Frank Asch, Eric Carle, Russell Hoban and Quentin Blake, all with classic stories that have really gone the distance with young children!

Some other picture books where the moon holds magic for a young protagonist:

• Imani's Moon  by JaNay Brown-Wood and Hazel Mitchell

• Kiwi Moon  by Gavin Bishop

• The Moonkeeper  by Zosienka   (Zofia "Zosienka" Gibbs)

• Do You Speak English Moon?  by Francesca Simon and Ben Court

And if you do want to commemorate the moon landing, but from a slightly different viewpoint look for:

• A Kite for Moon by Jane Yolen, Heidi E. Y. Stemple and Matt Phelan

A young boy, seeing that Moon is lonely, sends up a kite to cheer her up, then after growing up and learning many things, he becomes the first human to visit her. Dedicated to Neil Armstrong and written in recognition of the fiftieth anniversary of the first U.S. moon landing.

• I Am the Moon by Nanae Aoyama and Satoe Tone 

The Moon finds that she is lonely and in need of a friend. She leaves her place in space and travels to Earth, in search of an astronaut who visited her many years ago.

20th July 50th Anniversary of the Moon Landing (Part 1)

Fifty years ago, on July, 20th, 1969 everyone watched Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin land on the moon. I was one of the watchers. I was in my first year of high school and the whole school gathered in the school hall to watch a very small black and white television that was on a trolley on the stage. We sat in age order, the older Year 12s at the front of the hall back to Year 7 at the back. As you can imagine I saw nothing, but the significance of the moment was not lost on me. After all the moon is the only place in our solar system that humans have visited. Recently I had lunch with a group of girls I went to school with and we laughed as we reminisced about this occasion. 

Several new picture books have been published to commemorate this occasion, so I put together a large display of books in my library to share the occasion with today's students and their parents. They have been very slow to move out of the library and I am hoping that once they have been exposed to more of it on the television and internet, that they will come back after the school holidays and be more enthusiastic about borrowing them. In the past the young students I teach have been very interested in space, but not so much anymore.

Among the new books are

• Moonwalkers  by Mark Greenwood and Terry Denton
• Touch the Moon  by Phil Cummings and Coral Tulloch
• When We Walked on the Moon by David Long and Sam Kalda
• Moon! Earth's Best Friend by Stacy McAnulty
• Moonshot by Brian Floca (an expanded and reissued version of a book published ten years ago)
• Moon's First Friends: One Giant Leap for Friendship by Susannah Leonard Hill and Elisa Paganelli
• Go For the Moon: A Rocket, a Boy and the First Moon Landing  by Chris Gall
• The Usborne Book of the Moon  by Laura Cowan and Diana Toledana

And if you don't have access to these new books perhaps revisit some of the gems from the past like
• The Sea of Tranquility by Mark Haddon and Christian Birmingham
• One Giant Leap by Robert Burleigh and Mark Wimmer
• If You Decide to Go to the Moon  by Faith McNulty and Steven Kellogg
• Grandpa Takes Me to the Moon  by Timothy R. Gaffney and Barry Root
• Armstrong: The Adventurous Journey of a Mouse to the Moon  by Torben Kuhlmann

14th November Supermoon (perigee-syzygy)

We had great fun in the library today putting together a display of books that had a 'fullmoon' pictured on their covers in time for tonight's supermoon that we probably won't see here in Sydney. I love the name perigee-syzygy and couldn't wait to use it with the children. On Kidrex we learned what it was and how "The Supermoon on November 14, 2016, will be the closest a Full Moon has been to Earth since January 26, 1948. The next time a Full Moon is even closer to Earth will be on November 25, 2034".

Here's some of the books:

12th April Gianna Marino

Happy birthday Gianna Marino. Her picture books are very special. She writes about a variety of things but all her books feature animals and she illustrates them beautifully and endearingly. I especially like the expressions she manages to imbue the wales with in her most recent book, Following papa's Song.