MUSIC FOR MISTER MOON

In making amends for a thoughtless
act, a shy young cellist finds just the right audience.

So afflicted with performance
anxiety that her parents’ mere suggestion that she might play in an orchestra
one day makes her flushed and sweaty, Harriet Henry retreats to her room and
transforms it into a small, isolated house in which she can practice unheard.
But when the teacup she throws through a window to silence an annoying owl
knocks the moon down from the sky, Harriet—introducing herself, with a deft bit
of gender fluidity, as “Hank”—makes a wagon and responds to the wishes of “Mister
Moon” by wheeling him first to the hat maker (a bear) for a warm hat, then down
to the lake to listen to water and a distant bell buoy (“There is so much music
down below,” he comments. “It is so quiet up in the sky”), then finally back to
the sky to play for the moon, who has promised not to cheer or even watch. The
illustrations, as spare and harmonious as the prose, are pale constructs of
lightly applied pencil over misty ink monoprints featuring a large, gently
glowing moon with human features, a comically tiny wagon, and a serious-looking,
pigtailed child (white, like her parents) barely if at all taller than her
instrument. The ability of Harriet/Hank to remake her surroundings at will not
only enhances the episode’s dreamlike quality, but should also strike a chord
in retiring or introspective readers.