Blue Moon Bird product reviews

When I seen the cover of this book I found the cover and the title drew me in. The illustrations are simple hand drawn pictures but they are beautiful and bright and make you want to open the cover and read the story. Inside the pictures are just as beautiful and bold. Some of them look like pastel drawings in a simple collage type style, which I really loved!

The book follows a young boy who is a bit lonely he lives in a toy factory and watches the toys being made but he dreams of having a friend or a pet. One night on a blue moon the toy machine spits out a strange looking bird and the pair immediately become friends. They talk for hours. The bird couldn't fly as his wings were to short so the boy made him a harness and ballon style system much like a kite to help him fly.

The balloon floats away and gets tangled up into a kite. The owner of that kite soon becomes friends with the little boy and that is the end of the story as the two new friends return to the toy factory. I think it is a sweet little story about getting yourself out there and meeting new people.

The other thing I really liked about the book was the way they used the pages to display the words. On some of the pages the words were almost swooshed around the pages so you had to follow them through the images of the toy making machine to find out where they would lead. I thought that was a really cool feature and made reading it really interesting.

This was the book selected by my bird-mad daughter this evening for bedtime. She liked the look of the bird on the cover, carrying the small boy along in the sky. I found the striking bold colours of the skyscrapers really drew me to the book. We wondered what this book could be about.

Inside the cover was a note to readers about what a blue moon is. Its all about the cycles of the moon monthly, as well as every few years plus the blue moon meaning that I remember which means a rare occurrence. I read this out to my daughter, and she liked that. She enjoys knowing about space and the moon in particular, so it gave us a little non-fiction before the fiction.

This book is about a toy factory, which kind of reminded me of Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory or maybe the movie Toys. Its not as detailed or surreal as either of those references, but the factory seems to be magic. The illustrations are bold and colourful. I loved the graphic design style, with all the straight line edges. It looked like it had been made on a drawing board, like you could make it from a blue print, but its all crazy too.

The story itself is a simple one. Boy is lonely. Boy wishes for a friend. Friend comes along. They bond, and out of this friendship a confidence grows. It's a beautiful story and one that would be good for any child. I would get it for someone who has moved to a new area, or a new school. I think it has a gentle message to put yourself out there. My daughter loved the Blue Moon Bird, and wished she had one herself.