Finding Your Better Half: My Little Half Moon by Douglas Todd Jennerich

It's like the Teddy bear who is missing one eye. Or like your favorite puzzle with a missing piece. It's like a double-dip ice cream cone after the first scoop falls off. Incomplete and somehow sad.

ONE NIGHT I LOOKED UP AT HALF OF THE MOON.

The boy must have seen a full moon sometime--because half a moon just doesn't seem right.

NO ONE TO GLOW WITH AND EVERYONE KNOWING,
HOW SAD IS THE FACE THAT THE HALF-A-MOON'S SHOWING.

The boy worries that the little half-moon is lonely. He heads outside to see if the other half of the moon has shown up, but he sees nothing different. He camps out with a cup of cocoa and some toys, to keep the little moon company. It's lonely for him and he sees nothing new up there. He almost gives up.

And then one night when he goes out, he sees--not the little half-moon, but a full round moon. Ah! Now the moon looks just right, and tonight he can rest.

A HALF MOON IS NICE, BUT A FULL MOON IS BEST.

Douglas Todd Jennerich's My Little Half-Moon (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2017) is a sweet story, told in rhythmic, rhyming couplets, and illustrated piquantly by Kate Berube, in blackline drawings with soft water-colored nighttime hues. In a parallel story told only in the pictures, a girl in blue keeps watch on the moon from the forest, and under the bright sky the two become friends who rendezvous and swing way up high, almost to the moon. This little book is a light, first look at the lunar cycle (well, half of it at least).