When the Moon Is Full
 Penny Pollock
 (Reviewed by The Editor - Rebecca Brown)
 2001 Little, Brown & Co
  ISBN: 0316713171


In simple verses discover all the beauty of the months of a Lunar Year.

We are able to look directly at the Moon, unlike the Sun which would blind us, so Mary Azarian's prints of the full glowing orb beyond a field of ripe seeds draws us on into Penny Pollock's simple poems of each moon's beauty.

With traditional Native American names for each month, from the Wolf Moon to Long Night Moon, we follow the moon in all its yearly wonder.

Cold & white Moon glows over the shoulder of a forest of bare trees in January. Or Shines through the misty melting nights of The Sap Moon of March. In May, when spring has at last arrived, The Flower Moon lights up the furry-footed creatures as they dash through the night.

By August, The Green Corn Moon is golden as raccoons raid the fields & by November the summer is gone & The Beaver Moon is huge, mirrored in the pond where beavers are building their winter home.

In a question & answer section, moon gazers old & new can discover information about lunar eclipses and other interesting things about our closest celestial neighbor.

A quiet book that can be read & read again as the year in our temperate climate unfolds & we ask the questions of why the seasons change & how we named our months.

Penny Pollock is the author of several books including The Turkey Girl, illustrated by Ed Young, which won the American Folklore Society Aesop Accolade. As a descendant of Wyandotte Indians, Penny Pollock has a particular interest in Native Americam folklore.

May Azarian won the 1999 Caldecott Medal for Snowflake Bentley by Jacqueline Briggs Martin. She also illustrated Barn Cat which was chosen as one of Smithsonian's 1988 Notable Books for Children. Mary Azarian's technique for printmaking is on a 19th century handpress & she paints each print by hand. She also runs a catalog business, Farmhouse Press, through which she sells her address books, calendars & woodcut prints.
(03/10/02)

Rebecca