His keen eye falls upon a sleepy little fellow living on a sleepy little island who is a sweet-dreamer extraordinaire. One foggy night, the Man in the Moon has a startling thought: When the moon is less than full and bright, who will keep children safe at night? He needs a backup plan! Or a backup Guardian, as it were. The DreamWorks movie, Rise of the Guardians, is due November of 2012 and rumored to be in 3-D.The second picture book in Academy Award winner William Joyce’s The Guardians of Childhood series, The Sandman tells the true story of the keeper of dreams. They will tell the stories of Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, the Sandman, the Easter Bunny and Jack Frost. The Man in the Moon is the first of six picture and seven chapter books by William Joyce. Even then, some vocabulary will be troublesome. As for independent reading, and I have not actually leveled The Man in the Moon, my educated guess would be third grade+.

My educated guess would place miM at the primary level of six years+. Though listed as appropriate for four years+, I assert that the four year old would need to be quite advanced to understand the intricacies of the story. While The Man in the Moon makes for a fantastic read aloud, it is not an easy picture book to read. Yet, The Man in the Moon also has a sinister mysteriousness about it. The book is chock-full of gorgeously luminous illustrations and a whimsical fun. The first release in the series is The Man in the Moon is an origin story, explaining not only how the man in the moon came to be, but also why the earth’s moon glows. Those two literary gods alone were enough hype to turn my attention!Īuthor William Joyce has been working on the idea of telling the histories of childhood icons for twenty years. Then I saw quotes from two of my favorite living writers: “It instantly became my children's favorite book” - Michael Chabon, “A fabulous recapturing of an old, real fairytale world. I had lots of more important books to read. With thirteen scheduled books, in a mix of both picture and chapter formats, and a DreamWorks movie, starring Hugh Jackman, Alec Baldwin, and Jude Law, how could anyone overlook it? Yet, when the big book version of the first book in the series arrived on my doorstep last week, I sort of pushed it to the side. I must have been living under a rock to miss all the hype surrounding The Guardians of Childhood series.

The guardians of childhood books