One Lighthouse, One Moon and One Cat in Many Illustrations

Reading Fox on Stage the other day, I noticed that the book was dedicated to Anita Lobel. Not only have I enjoyed her books before, but I happened to have taken one out of the library on this particular trip, so this little dedication made me all the more anxious to read One Lighthouse, One Moon, which is driven by her detailed watercolor and gouache illustrations.

There are many books aimed at young children that involve counting or colors and some that have to do with the days of the week or the months of the year. One Lighthouse, One Moon encompasses all four of these basic concepts in three separate stories - though they're not so much stories as progressions of objects or activities.

The real star of the book is Nini, a grayish-brown striped cat that appears in all but a couple of the illustrations. In All Week Long, she mostly stays in the background, peeking out from behind the shoes of a girl who we never see from the waist up. On each day of the week, we see a different pair of shoes and just a bit of the matching ensemble. For instance, we have "Blue shoes on WEDNESDAY," in which the mysterious character sports blue sneakers with stars on the sides and complementary athletic pants. The print is very large and gray, and the day of the week is written in caps, while the font color of the first word of the sentence changes with each page.

Nini moves to a central role with Nini's Year, in which we go through the year observing how the cat acts in any given month. The font is a bit smaller here but still very easy to read, and once again the key word in the sentence is written all in caps. For example: "In FEBRUARY Nini avoided kisses on Valentine's Day." We get a funny picture of the reticent cat peering over the top of the bucket in which she has concealed herself, evidently to see if the coast is clear. In this story, we get two illustrations per page, one on top of the other, until December brings a little twist that merits one more full-page illustration.

Nini's presence is considerably diminished in the title story, which focuses on a series of events in this small lakeside town. The font is again as large as in the first story, and this time the numbers are in caps: "FIVE whales blew spouts of water in the air." In addition to counting to ten, the tale progresses through the day, beginning with the dim pre-dawn hours and ending with the inky night, which serves as a sort of epilogue with "And ONE HUNDRED stars and ONE moon lit up the sky."

Kids will get a kick out of finding Nini in most of the pictures, while adults can rejoice that they're getting four lessons for the price of one in One Lighthouse, One Moon.