Night Needs Light, Too! A Big Mooncake for Little Star by Grace Lin

Why does the moon change its shape?

LITTLE STAR'S MAMA LAID THE BIG MOONCAKE ONTO THE SKY TO COOL.

"NOW, LITTLE STAR, CAN YOU REMEMBER NOT TO TOUCH THIS MOONCAKE UNTIL I TELL YOU TO?"

Little Star nods, and she does remember what Mama said--for a while, as she gets ready to climb into bed with her bunny toy. But after a few hours she wakes up. The first thing she sees is the mooncake so near in the sky. It looks so delicious.

WOULD HER MAMA NOTICE IF SHE TOOK JUST A TINY NIBBLE?

Savvy young readers will know where this literary folk tale is going, as night after night, Little Star stealthily nibbles away at the mooncake and it grows smaller and smaller. Ah, but the trail of crumbs leading to Little Star's bed grows bigger and bigger--until one night, when Mama goes to look for her mooncake, it is not there. The sky is empty--and so dark! The culprit is not hard to find.

"MAMA, LET'S GO BAKE ANOTHER ONE!"

And they do, in Grace Lin's acclaimed A Big Mooncake for Little Star (Little, Brown and Company, 2018). There are many folktales about the moon's always changing shape. Some stories say that a dark dragon takes big bites out of the moon nightly, but Lin's version is a far more benevolent origin tale of the phases of the moon, with mother and child making a big new mooncake to light the sky, with a new way to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival, which author-illustrator Lin says is her favorite holiday. Lin's lovely illustrations earned her the Caldecott Honor Award, and is the perfect companion book to her A Big Bed for Little Snow (see review here).

Says Publishers Weekly, "Lin successfully combines three distinctive and memorable elements: a fable that avoids seeming contrived, a vision of a mother and child living in cozy harmony, and a night kitchen of Sendakian proportions."