by Moe Zilla

Created on: March 08, 2010

"They gathered in the field, honking and flapping their creaky wings, then rose up into the air." And then the geese are gone, and the book is about waiting for their return. "Will it ever be summer again," a girl asks her grandfather. "Of course it will," he replies.

"We have to wait for the Goose Moon."

Grandfather's farm comes to life through some magical illustrations by Jim Postier. Each picture fills the page with vivid watercolors, leaving the words as insets in lightly-colored boxes. And each face is sketched with an enthusiastic expression, like when the girl is watching the snowflakes fall or when she shares a toboggan ride with her grandfather. "Winter is fun," writes Carolyn Arden - and the illustration shows the girl sterring the toboggan as it blasts chunks of snow from a streaky white hillside.

There's a warm yellow light glowing through the lattice window, as grandpa plays a guitar while they sing. There's a cozy fire, and even mugs of hot cocoa. But soon the girl gets tired of winter, and that's when her grandfather explains about the goose moon. "One magic night, when the moon is full and the sky is perfectly clear, the geese will follow the stars to find their way home to us.

"They'll bring summer back on their wings."

His face is lit with the same yellow, cozy glow, as he tells the girl to watch for the signs of spring. It might be a warm breeze through your hair, or birds singing louder in the morning. Icicles drip off the barn's roof, and green shoots of grass poke up through the snow, as each night the girl watches and waits. One special night, grandpa wakes her up to sit on the porch swing. They see geese flying past a bright full moon.

And the little girls eyes shine...

I wondered if the book was based on a real childhood memory. Carolyn Arden dedicated her book to "Grampa Dyce, whose love of nature inspired me" (and also to her parents). According to the book's jacket, she grew up to write articles for nature magazines like Audobon, BBC Wildlife, Omni, and Sierra. But the book's jacket remembers that she spent much of her childhood outdoors, exploring the woods behind her family's home in New Jersey, "and the fields around their grandparents' farm in Ithaca..."

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