Years ago we had a kitten named Pedro, who (as all kittens do) loved to bat at dangling things. When Christmas came around we dare not get a tree. Instead we hung live garland around the ceiling and hung ornaments from that. Pedro went nuts. He would bat at the ornaments (five feet or so out of his reach) and mewl pitifully.
The kitten in Kevin Henke's Kitten's First Full Moon has even less realistic aspirations. Kitten spies the full moon for the first time. But she thinks it's a bowl of milk.
She tries and tries to get it. She sits on the top step and sticks out her tongue (getting a bug instead). She jumps for it, chases it, and climbs a tree. Another bowl of milk eerily similar to the first one appears in a pond. So Kitten gets wet.
Luckily when she sulks back home there is a real bowl of milk waiting on the porch.
The black and white drawings in this book are absolutely stunning. No wonder it won the Caldecott in 2005.
I especially like the realistic behavior of the kitten. Each time the kitten fails to reach her goal, she stops to groom, cool as a cucumber, as though nothing happened.
I highly recommend this book for nighttime reading.
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