Fans of Eric Carle will not be disappointed with this beautiful, expansive book. Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me, dedicated to Carle’s own daughter who asked the very same question as a child, tells the story of a little girl, Monica, who wishes to play with the moon. Try as she might, however, she just can’t reach it.

So her loving father gets the largest ladder he can find and climbs atop the tallest mountain and asks the moon permission for his daughter to play with it. The moon is happy about the idea but says he’s simply too big. However, he will get smaller, and when he is small enough, Monica can play with him.

Monica is delighted to play with the moon; she dances with it, tosses it in the air, and simply loves it. But the moon starts to dwindle down, shrinking smaller and smaller until one day it is simply gone. Then, one night, when she looks into the sky, it’s right back where it belongs, smiling.

The adorable story and ever-fun illustrations are accompanied by interactive pages that make it even more enjoyable to read. The ladder page, for example, folds out into a four-page spread, making the ladder seem very large indeed! Then when Monica’s father places the ladder on top of the mountain, the page folds upward to show just how tall the mountain is. another fold-out section features a huge display of the round full moon with Papa speaking to it, tiny in comparison, below.

With a nighttime palette of blue and green watercolors and the book’s theme itself, Carle’s Papa Please Get the Moon for Me is a perfect bedtime story for little dreamers sure to imagine playing with the moon upon entering slumber land. It’s also a lovely way to ease into an explanation about how the moon gets smaller and larger each month.

My daughter used to get very upset about the moon “shrinking.” She always thought that part of it was “missing” and would ask when it would return, or if someone took it. We purchased this book and since we’ve been reading it together, not only does she enjoy all of the moon’s lovely phases, it has also become a favorite of hers that she likes to have read over and over again. (She also loves the little cat who appears on various pages in the story.) It’s an absolutely lovely story about a girl and her doting dad, and the wonders of the moon itself.