“It is so easy to get lost in a book”, the heroine of The Moon in The Morning says at some point. Rebecca Nebesar’s fairytale with a new twist is just that kind of book; it draws the reader into its graciously woven episodes. And what is being woven?
Through the eyes of Jean, the 13 year old heroine surrounded by the memory of her beloved grandmother and in search of her mature self, we enter a magical world, where the real and the imaginary are not antonyms anymore.
But this is not just any fairytale; it is not a world of naïve fantasy. The skill of Rebecca Nebesar is that she manages to draw the reader unbeknownst into a very sophisticated kind of world. One in which Greek goddesses coexist with magical Dust Bunnies, in which language itself acquires magical plasticity, a world of poetry and inspiring books, but also the contemporary world of a teenager in the ‘google-age’.
The reader of any age will be thrilled to discover how all the events and images connect into a gracious pattern of which so many moments in the story are symbolic – from the spider-web of Grandmother Spider to Jean sewing a blanket out of her old jeans!
The five books that compose the story – the books of Magic, Learning, Memory, Beauty and Truth– build up a spiritual ladder on which Jean has to ascend. Each of the books also opens a new gate into a luxuriant imaginary world which the author completes with her own vivid illustrations."
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