Moonbear's Shadow

Once again we are pleased with another Frank Asch book. The Moonbear Series is one of our favorite series for it's simplicity yet though provoking stories. Moonbear tries to rid himself of his shadow in all sorts of ways and as the story continues, there is a point to show how the sun's position is changing in the sky. As a toddler, they will enjoy the story, as children grow, they can understand more and more about the nature of shadows.

There are about twenty-eight pages with each one being of white background with various square sizes of the illustrations in blue, green, brown and white colors. This makes the picture a separate box and the text below or next to the picture. The bear is a brown bear that starts the day by fishing at the pond. Bear notices a big fish while hooking the worm onto his pole and wants to catch it. The bear stood up to toss his pole in the water but his shadow scared the fish away. The bear tried to tell his shadow to go away but it stayed there. Since the shadow would not leave the Bear decided he would run until the shadow disappeared. The Bear ran around the pond, through a field of flowers and then jumped over a brook ending up hiding behind a tree. Next the Bear went home to get a hammer and nails to nail his shadow to the ground but the shadow did not go down. Then the Bear got out a shovel thinking he could bury the shadow in a deep hole. By the time Bear finished filling the hole up it was afternoon with the sun high in the sky but no shadow to be found. After all this hard work Bear went inside to take a nap awakening after the sun had set. Bear went to open his front door and there was his shadow on the floor so he quickly shut the door going outside and hoping to leave his shadow inside. It turned out his shadow was too quick because it was outside the door with the Bear. Now the Bear decided that if the shadow would let him catch a fish he would let the shadow get one too and when he nodded his head so did his shadow. Back to the pond the Bear goes again but this time the sun is in another part of the sky so the shadow was able to steer clear of scaring the fish. This time the shadow was behind the Bear while in the morning the shadow was in front of him closer to the pond. At the end of the day the Bear and his shadow caught their big fish. My six-year old likes to play around with shadows on the wall in the house plus loves bears so this is a book that gets read quite often. I would suggest a toddler to first grader would benefit from the silliness of the bear and his shadow.

My son loved this book! He even knew what would happen next and laughed and enjoyed seeing how silly bear was by trying to bury his own shadow. This was an excellent book, not too long, not too short and he will look forward to reading it by himself this year when he learns to read.

Frank Asch has come to be one of my favorite children's authors