Pirate Who Tried to Capture the Moon

A gruff and greedy pirate captures whole ships full of things he wants and hoards them away and forgets that he has most of them. None of his stolen treasures bring him joy after the capture, he just wants more and more. The beautiful moon watches over his pirating activities nightly, and the pirate decides he wants to capture it and add it to his collection. When the moon won't come close enough to be captured, he begins to steal all of the things the moon loves to lure it in. The surprise ending is offbeat, happy, and heartwarming--a wonderful, character-building moral about finding joy and love through giving away selfish desires. My four year old son and I found this at the library, and he was quoting favorite lines from this book after two readings! This is an older book, but what a find! The illustrations are wonderful sketches with only muted color washes here and there, appropriate for night scenes (think Schoolhouse Rock characters.) The absence of brightly colored pictures does not take away from the book at all. The whole story takes place at night, so the sparse, muted color makes it a perfect, soothing bedtime book. I'm buying this one for my son, it's definitely a pirate's treasure for us both!