Moon Plane
From School Library Journal
Starred Review.
PreSchool-K–This gentle bedtime story begins when a small boy sees a prop plane in the sky and imagines riding in it–first gliding over a car, then soaring past a train. His flight of imagination takes him beyond the ocean and into outer space, where he lands on the moon, takes a few steps on its surface, jumps, and flies just like the airplane. At last he returns home to his mother, who tucks him into bed to dream of airplanes. A prop plane is just the right technology for this subdued tale, and the monochromatic pencil-on-watercolor-paper illustrations create the atmosphere of a silent movie. This quiet mood encourages readers to listen for the hum of the engine and the whisper of the wind. The books sensual qualities will entrance youngsters, and the soothing text and soft artwork create the comfort and reassurance that children need at bedtime. A must-buy.
–Carolyn Janssen, Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, OH
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

May 19, 2002
CHILDREN'S BOOKS: Friends
By PENELOPE GREEN

HONDO & FABIAN
Written and illustrated
by Peter McCarty.
Unpaged. New York:
Henry Holt & Company. $16.95.
(Ages 2 to 5)

I THINK if you could see things from a 2-year-old's perspective it would be like a glimpse of paradise -- a lucent and sensuous before-the-fall world vibrating with the sweet pleasures of the acute present tense. The view from age 2 shows a selfhood on the brink of ''I,'' finely tuned to those other beings in the same state of becoming, like the kitty and the dog.

You can visit this place, and meet these protobeings, in ''Hondo & Fabian,'' a sort of pre-story about the arc of a day for two friends, a kitty named Fabian and a dog named Hondo, and the little person, otherwise known as the baby, they live with.

It's the sparest of plots: the kitty and the dog wake up. The dog goes to the beach with his friend Fred, who's also a dog. The kitty stays home and plays with the baby. But as in the best haiku, a flick of detail reveals a whole world of emotion and drama. Here, the details are in Peter McCarty's illustrations. His soft-pencil drawings glow and shimmer, underscoring the Edenic qualities of his little beings, who live in a muted world of Platonic absolutes, the whole of which you must guess at from the bits McCarty has framed.

The undulating curves of a car (from which Hondo leans into the wind, his face full of ecstasy and yearning -- all sniff, if you know what I mean) suggest a 40's-era black Ford; a room is all baseboard and window frame, and maybe flowered wallpaper; a sandwich is made from white bread as Wonder Bread-curvy as the car.

And the faces -- they will break your heart. Hondo's nose evokes all the eager wet noses that have ever thrust themselves into your hand.

The language is pitch-perfect for little guys: ''Where is Hondo going, riding in a car?'' There are lots of thought spaces, so you both can discuss and opine. When Fabian ''plays with the baby,'' you know that Fabian is aching to jump out of those plump little arms. He takes his pleasure as he finds it, scrabbling a roll of toilet paper in a bathroom as the deadpan narration tells us, ''Fabian has fun too.''

In one of C. S. Lewis's science fiction novels, an extraordinary epic called ''That Hideous Strength,'' he offers a marvelous description of the inner life of a bear, which he sums up as all sensation, ''a potent adjective floating in a nounless void, a pure quality.'' Here's more Lewis on the bear, his words a nice coda to the world so sweetly pictured in ''Hondo & Fabian'': ''The appetencies which a human mind might disdain as cupboard loves were for him quivering and ecstatic aspirations which absorbed his whole being, infinite yearnings, stabbed with the threat of tragedy and shot through with the colors of Paradise.'' Such is the tenor of life when you're a bear, or a dog hanging out a car window, or a kitty on the brink of a turkey sandwich.

Or a 2-year-old.

Penelope Green writes for various magazines in New York.

Moon Plane
From Booklist
*Starred Review*
A small boy stands in a field of tall grass. Looking up at an airplane flying through the sky, he imagines what it would be like on that flight--to fly faster than a car can go, to soar past a train, to burst into space. He imagines stepping off the plane onto the surface of the moon, where, when he jumps, his weightlessness will make him fly. But soon he must bring himself back to the plane, back to Earth, where his mother is waiting for him. The simple text (with its ending a gentle reminder of Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are) appears one brief line to a page. Though this idea (and it's more an idea than a story) will catch kids' imagination, it is only when combined with McCarty's art that it soars. Using pencils, McCarty creates soft-edged, silver-tone artwork notable for its elegant simplicity. Yet this is undoubtedly child-friendly. The train, the plane, and even the surface of the moon have a solidity that will make children want to reach out and touch, even as the pictures' dreamy softness will move kids to a space inside themselves. McCarty catches both the way children's imaginations work and the connections they make.
-Ilene Cooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

November 21, 1999
CHILDREN'S BOOKS: Books in Brief
By J.D. BIERSDORFER

Little Bunny On the Move
Written and illustrated
by Peter McCarty.
Holt, $15.95. (Ages 2 to 5)

Make no mistake about it -- this is a rabbit with a mission. ''It was time for a little bunny to be on the move. From here to there, a bunny goes where a bunny must,'' begins Peter McCarty's fine new picture book. With that, Little Bunny picks up and begins his march through ''Little Bunny on the Move.''

Although he's not saying where or why he's taking this trip, this goal-oriented cottontail doesn't let anything he encounters along the way -- sheep, cows, railroad tracks or inquisitive little girls -- deter him. As he moves resolutely through a variety of landscapes, one becomes mighty intrigued with where this hopper is heading. And, with his determination to get what he wants, Little Bunny makes vegetable-snitching Peter Rabbit look like a slacker.

Unlike many children's books that feature bright, robust tints, McCarty's woodland travelogue is illustrated in a soft-focus monochromatic palette with just a hint of color. The whispery illustrations, created in pencil and watercolor on heavy watercolor paper, add wonderfully to the sense of mystery about the bunny's journey. The overall design and production of the book contribute to the reading experience as well. Each left-hand page holds the text (often not more than a few words) and a small oval close-up of Little Bunny, while the right-hand page consists of a large illustration revealing a bigger picture.

And in the end, Little Bunny does get to where he wanted to go -- back with all the other little bunnies in a large meadow. Although deceptively simple in presentation, ''Little Bunny On the Move'' nicely portrays a time-honored objective for children and adults alike: going home.

J. D. Biersdorfer