Maggie Pouncey

The text of this story fully immerses itself in the imaginations of two young brothers as they sneak up to the roof, board a contraption built from household junk, and fly to the Moon. The parents appear only briefly in the book's beginning, indulgent and know-it-all; but these are kids who Know What They Are About; they are planning a trip to the Moon, and they don't need their parents' help. Once there, they encounter engineering challenges (they didn't bring enough tape), they make "moon angels" in the surface dust, and then they return. The book is as much a celebration of childhood pretend play and imagination as it is a book about lunar exploration. The text is mostly straightforward, with short sentences and mostly simple words, with a few challenging ones salted in to stretch a kid's vocabulary. It'd be perfect for a beginning reader to read aloud with help from an adult for the harder words.… (mehr)

This first novel kind of sputters into life about halfway through, only to peter out again disappointingly at the end. The main character is prickly and hard to get a handle on, but overall I would say that the character and the writing both reward patience. Pouncey's style is dryly humorous and she adroitly delineates the pleasures and pitfalls of life in a small college town. I happen to have lived in the area in which the fictional town and college of Darwin are set, and Pouncey's observations made me laugh out loud with recognition more than once.… (mehr)