cover image The Full Moon at the Napping House

The Full Moon at the Napping House

Audrey Wood, illus. by Don Wood. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $17.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-544-30832-9

The Napping House is anything but in this companion to the Woods’ evergreen 1984 picture book. Nearly all of the familiar players return—the granny, curly-haired boy, fuzzy dog, and tawny cat—but under the diaphanous light of an enormous moon, “everyone is restless.” Audrey Wood again uses a cumulative structure, but while a tiny flea started a chain reaction that awakened everyone in The Napping House, this time a cricket has the opposite effect as it chirps “A full-moon song/ that soothes the mouse,/ who calms the cat,/ who gentles the dog,/ who snuggles the boy,/ who hugs the granny,/ in the dreamy bed,/ in the full-moon house,/ where no one now is restless.” The pale white glow of the moon gives Don Wood’s scenes a jittery midnight energy as the boy plays catch with the dog and the beleaguered granny tries to get comfortable. Concluding in a state of cozy restfulness, the Woods’ story serves as a pleasing inversion of the previous book and works even better as a bedtime read. Ages 4–8. Agent: Rosalie Grace Heacock Thompson, Heacock Literary Agency. (Sept.)