“Moonpowder” by John Rocco (Hyperion, 9781423100119, $15.99, 48 pages, ages
4 to 8)
John Rocco’s new picture book, “Moonpowder,” is a great bedtime or
quiet-time story and a fine book for Father’s Day. Rocco’s calming, richly
painted illustrations help tell the story of an inventive young boy’s quest
to return sweet dreams to the world as he waits for his father to come home
from serving his country.
Every night, Eli Treebuckle’s mom tucks him into bed saying, “Good night, my
little fix-it man. Sweet dreams.” But Eli has only dreamed bad dreams ever
since his father left to fly planes in the war. Eli can fix or invent almost
anything (including a prototype helio-rocket-copter), but he can’t seem fix
missing his dad. One night while Eli is up late working on an invention, the
Man in the Moon comes to his window: he desperately needs Eli’s help to fix
the factory in the sky where all of the world’s moonpowder is made.
Moonpowder helps everyone to dream sweet dreams, and with the floating
factory broken down, no one in the whole world is getting a good night’s
sleep!
Rocco’s design for the moonpowder factory is filled with blinking lights,
rotating cogs and wheels, and rolling maintenance robots called “gizbots.”
It’s truly a youngster’s dream come to life. Eli sets to work tightening
valves and checking gauges, but he finds a problem that all his mechanical
know-how can’t seem to fix: the Man in the Moon is completely out of
moonpowder, and he needs Eli to dream up a fresh batch to jumpstart the
factory.
Eli does his best (in a glorious spread of pictures that show him flying
with a pair of homemade mechanical wings), and in the morning, he wakes up
back at home, where he discovers that his father has come home to his
family. Moonpowder seems to be back in full production, and all feels right
with the world.
Rocco dedicates this big-hearted story “to the children of soldiers
everywhere.”
Review by
Mark David Bradshaw, June 4, 2008
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