Kitten's First Full Moon

Henkes, K. (2004). Kitten’s first full moon. New York, NY: Greenwillow Books 

     

    Kevin Henkes’ Kitten’s First Full Moon is an adorable and fun book for pre-school and kindergarten aged children.  The main character, Kitten, sees her first full moon and thinks it is a little bowl of milk in the sky.  Like most felines, Kitten loved milk and wanted the milk in the sky, so she licked it.  Kitten quickly realized this was a bad idea because instead of licking the bowl of milk, she got a lightening bug.  This begins a journey to reach the little bowl of milk in the sky.  Kitten reached for the bowl, chased it down the sidewalk, through the garden, in the field, to a pond and climbed a tree, but still no milk from the little bowl in the sky.  Then, in the pond, Kitten saw a much bigger bowl of milk.  What happens next will have readers laughing.  

    Henkes wrote Kitten’s First Full Moon in third-person point of view.  The narrator is telling Kitten’s story to the reader.  The organization of the story is appropriate for the targeted audience.  There is anywhere from one to four sentences on a page or every two pages.  This is a picture storybook because both the words and the pictures tell the story.  For example, the text said, “But Kitten only ended up with a bug on her tongue” and the illustration on that same page shows exactly that, a lightning bug on Kitten’s tongue. 

    In 2005, Henkes was awarded The Caldecott Medal for his beautiful illustrations in this book.  Cartoon art was the artistic style used with rounded figures and exaggerated action like when Kitten sprang from the top of the porch.  The artistic media Henkes used is painting, using gouache, which gave the illustrations a solid appearance.  Along with the gouache, he used pencils to create the black and white illustrations.  The visual element, line, is strongly used throughout the illustrations.  Henkes used thick dark lines to create the objects like Kitten, the moon, the tree and other background objects.  The illustrations help complement several elements of fiction.  The setting of the story is at night and depicted by the moon and the black and white colors used.  The pictures also show who the main character is by including Kitten on almost every page.  The reader can also see that the kitten is determined because of how hard she tried to get to the milk. 

    As mentioned above this story is targeted towards pre-school and kindergarten aged students. Kitten’s First Full Moon would be a wonderful read aloud for the classroom.  The BIG questions that could be asked are:

• Why didn’t Kitten get any milk from the pond?
• What if there is something you want, but you are unable to get it.  What could you do to get it?

    Through the years I have enjoyed reading Kevin Henkes’ books to my students, like Wemberly Worried, Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse, Shelia Rae, The Brave and my favorite Chrysanthemum just to name a few.  I will be honest, I only knew Henkes for his Mouse books, I was not aware of the other books he has written.