Peter and the Moon

PreS-K—Peter wants to give his mother a wonderful gift. He decides it can be nothing less than the moon and engages his family and neighbors to boost him higher, precariously so, in order to grab a piece of it. A setback in this fantastical process sends Peter off in a huff on a trek around the globe, but he returns to his town and tries again. This time he succeeds not only in obtaining starlike pieces for all those who helped him reach into the heavens, but also in acquiring the beautiful crescent moon for his beloved mother. Told in erratically rhyming verse that has been clumsily translated from the French, the plot wears thin with many rhyming words overused, e.g., "small," "all," "tall." Charming, stylized illustrations in a glowing yet muted palette depict the colorfully dressed inhabitants of a vaguely European urban setting from a variety of visual perspectives but they may not be enough to outweigh the "lost in translation" text.—Kathleen Finn, St. Francis Xavier School, Winooski, VT