Books

2019 Caldecott Honor

• NEIBA Book Award Finalist 2018
• Featured in the Society of Illustrators Original Art Show
• Amazon Best Book of 2018 for Children Ages 3-5
• Shelf Awareness Best Book for Children’s and Teen
• NYPL Best Book of 2018
• 2018 Kirkus Reviews Best Book
• 2018 School Library Journal Best Book
• 2018 Publishers Weekly Best Book
• 2018 Boston Globe Best Book
• 2018 Horn Book Fanfare Book
• 2018 Washington Post Best Book
• 2018 BookPage Best Book
• 2018 Chicago Pubic Library Best Book
• 2018 King County Library System Best Book
• 2018 Iowa Public Radio Holiday Gift Guide Pick
• 2018 Book Riot Holiday Gift Guide Pick

Kirkus Reviews
*Starred Review* Little Star has trouble resisting the Big Mooncake that Mama has hung in the sky in Lin’s (When the Sea Turned Silver, 2016, etc.) luminous departure from her usual block-print style.
After Little Star and her mama, both wearing jet-black pajamas adorned with bright yellow stars, bake a huge yellow mooncake, Mama reminds Little Star to leave it in the sky to cool. Of course Little Star tries, but she wakes in the night, unable to resist taking a tiny nibble. Mama surely won’t notice. Each subsequent night, Little Star steals another bite, and soon observant readers may realize what is happening: The Big Mooncake is waning from a full moon to a new moon. Lin’s storytelling is both clever and radiant. Painted in gouache against perfectly black pages, the characters’ pajamas have no edges, only the stars defining the separation between foreground and background. The mooncake gleams against the black as well, crumbs scattering like stars in the sky—a visual delight, suffusing the book with a feeling of otherworldliness that is offset by Little Star’s childlike authenticity and her loving relationship with Mama. An author’s note on the jacket flap indicates that while this story is not rooted in Chinese cosmology, it is Lin’s homage to the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival, her “favorite Asian holiday.”
A warm and glowing modern myth. (Picture book. 3-8)

Publisher’s Weekly
*Starred Review* Nighttime paintings by Lin (Where the Mountain Meets the Moon) add magic to this fable about why the moon waxes and wanes. The story’s events unfold against the velvety black of the night sky as Mama and Little Star, dressed in black pajamas spangled with yellow stars, work on their mooncake (an Asian holiday treat, Lin explains in an author’s note) in the kitchen. Mama takes the cake out of the oven and lays it “onto the night sky to cool.” She tells Little Star not to touch it, and Little Star attends but awakens in the middle of the night and remembers the cake. A double-page spread shows Little Star’s speculative glance on the left and the huge golden mooncake—or is it the round, golden full moon?—on the right. Whichever it is, Little Star takes a nibble from the edge, another the next night, and so on until the moon wanes to a delicate crescent. 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. Ages 4–8. (Aug.)

Horn Book
*Starred Review* Little Star and her mother bake a mooncake, the sweet treat associated with the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival. The ingredients for their super-sized mooncake cover a mammoth table, because these two make their home in the night sky. No walls close them in, darkness surrounds them, and their black pajamas are covered in luminous yellow stars. Look closely at their celestial kitchen to see nods to constellations (a large and small “dipper” hang from a shelf) and even some spilled milk in the shape of the Milky Way. Little Star’s mother hangs the Big Mooncake in the sky to cool, reminding her daughter not to touch it until given permission. But the girl’s hunger overcomes her, and she sneaks off repeatedly during the night (“pat pat pat” go her feet) to snack on the mooncake (“Nibble, nibble…yum!”), her trail of crumbs forming so many galaxies in the great inkyblack sky. In one spread, we see twelve separate instances of Little Star nibbling on the mooncake as it gradually shrinks in size and shape to a thin crescent. Mama, hardly surprised, agrees to make another. It’s all mesmerizing—Little Star’s astral home; her outsized sense of mischief; the dwindling cake as a stand-in for the waning moon; and Lin’s pleasing, soothing text, perfect for reading aloud to little moon-watchers here on Earth. August/Ages 3 – 7

School Library Journal
*Starred Review* Little Star’s mother admonishes her not to eat the giant mooncake, which she left cooling in the night sky, but Little Star has her own ideas. Little Star makes a mischievous choice. “Yum!” Each night, she wakes from her bed in the sky and nibbles from the giant mooncake. “‘Little Star!’ her mama said, shaking her head even though her mouth was curving. ‘You ate the big mooncake again, didn’t you?’” Rather than scolding, Mama responds with a kind offer to bake a new mooncake. Observant eyes will recognize that the final pages showing Little Star and her mama baking a new mooncake are a repeat of the front papers—a purposeful hint that the ritual is repeated monthly as Little Star causes the phases of the moon. Artwork is gouache on watercolor paper. Each page has a glossy black background and small white font. Little Star and her mother have gentle countenances twinkling with merriment. Both wear star-studded black pajamas that are distinguishable from the inky sky only by their yellow stars and the occasional patch of Little Star’s exposed tummy. The cherubic Little Star floats through the darkness, her mooncake crumbs leaving a trail of stardust in the sky. VERDICT The relationship between Little Star and her mother offers a message of empowerment and reassurance. Lin’s loving homage to the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival is sure to become a bedtime favorite.

BCCB
*Starred Review* When Little Star’s mother “laid the Big Mooncake onto the night sky to cool,” Star is determined not to touch it. All that determination ebbs in the middle of the night, however, and night after night Little Star eats away more of the Mooncake in the sky (“Would her mama notice if she took a tiny nibble?”), reducing it to an increasingly slim crescent until it’s “just a trail of twinkling crumbs.” Fortunately, Mama isn’t angry, and she and Little Star get to work making another mooncake to hang in the sky. While the book is noncommittal about the degree of Mom’s possible complicity, this folkloric pourquoi tale effectively blends peaceful bedtime rhythms with the lure of irresistible snacking temptation. The gouache art floats the cozy, realistic figures against an inky black background; Mama and Little Star’s star-patterned pajamas and the phases-of-the-Mooncake spread help convey the underlying meaning of the tale, while their Asian-American identity gives a visual cultural connection for the mooncake. A satisfying contemporary response to Frank Asch’s classic Mooncake (BCCB 9/83) or Thurber’s Many Moons, this could join them in a lunar storytime—or just give youngsters an out for some midnight snacking.