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Maurice Sendak was just 31 years old, and he hadn't yet become famous for "Where the Wild Things Are". But he'd already illustrated more than 60 children's books, and in 1959 he was hired to draw illustrations for Janice May Udry. Udry's book "A Tree is Nice" had won the Caldecott medal two years earlier. Ironically, in just four more years it would be Sendak's book that would win the same honor!

"The Moon Jumpers" follows the same style as some of Udry's earlier books, with simple sentences about the sights of nature. She notes the sun's setting and the way the sunflowers lean. Udry had her own poetic voice, and faith in her powers of description. And Sendak's stark illustrations make it all seem wild vividly real - and even wild.

There's a fluffy owl on a branch with a round moon in the background. Sendak uses a black and white sketch, but there's full-color drawings too with his familiar abstract impressions and dark cool colors. A pointy cat casts a shadow as it walks in the moonlight. The family's house appears on the next page, with only shapes to represent its windows and walls.

If there's a story to the book, it begins after several pages of describing the night. And its plot is simply this: children come out into the night to play. "The warm night-wind tosses our hair..." Udry writes, "And we all dance, barefooted." They dance on the grass, and they play tag. "With the wind and with each other."

It's a nice change after "Where the Wild Things Are," which describe one boy being punished, and brooding alone in his room about a kingdom of monsters. In "The Moon Jumpers," there's a band of children dancing and playing happily on their lawn. In one drawing they stand on their head, just like Max does in "Where the Wild Things Are." But there's still hints in this book of the darkness that characterized Sendak's later work. While the children play, a black cat stares with spooky, unsmiling eyes.

"We climb the tree just to be in a tree at night," Udry writes, and her story shows a gentle fondness for the way children play. "[W]e make a little camp and pretend we're on an island for the night," she writes. "We make up songs. And poems." The moon is a balloon to them - a play thing that they jump to try to catch. And when a giant shadow appears on the lawn, there's a funny surprising waiting for them.

It's their father - his shadow long in the light of the moon.

Learn more about this author, Moe Zilla.
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