Long Night Moon

By: Cynthia Rylant

Illustrated by: Mark Siegel

I enjoyed reading this book written in poem form. It was not my very favorite or my least favorite by Rylant. First, each page consists of beautiful, dark illustrations. Readers can get a feel of the mood of the story just by looking at the front cover. You know this is going to be about night, which sometimes seems to be a very eery and scary time of day. The front cover does not convey scary or eeriness to me. It conveys a type of peace and the book is not necessarily about scary night time things. Each page is a full-page bleed drawn with charcoal. This proves to be very effective. Readers are absorbed into the night which I think the author and illustrator wants us to be. When I think about the night, things are not always clear. You can make out images when it's nighttime outside, but not everything can be seen clearly. Using charcoal instead of paint makes me feel this way about the illustrations. You can make out animals and trees and plants, but readers really have to focus on them.

Another item I noticed is that the first page that starts with the January moon has a shadow of a woman and her little baby in her arms. The rest of the story, readers can observe animals and plants, but not the woman and her baby. These two are seen again on the December moon page. The story begins and ends with the pair, almost like a full cycle, like a full year. The text states on the December moon page, "This is the faithful moon." It's reliable, similar as to how a mother is reliable and depended upon by her child.

Lastly, the text is typed in cursive. Why was this printed in cursive? We talk in class about how authors and illustrators do things for a reason. I was just wondering what this reason could have been.