A little girl celebrate the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival with her family in this lovely picture-book, and learns of the folklore behind the celebration when her Ah-ma (grandmother) shares the story of the archer Hou Yi and his wife, the gentle Chang'e. Saving the world, and restoring the balance between Heaven and Earth, Hou Yi shoots nine of the ten suns in the sky down, and is rewarded with a potion of immortality. Although he and Chang'e, well aware that such a potion could spell disaster in the wrong hands, hide it away, a thief comes when the archer is away, and threatens to make off with it. In desperation, Chang'e swallows it herself, and is transported to the moon, there to reside eternally. It is Hou Yi, missing his beloved wife, who starts the tradition of offering mooncakes, on the anniversary of the day she became the Spirit and Lady in the Moon...

A debut for author Christina Matula, The Shadow in the Moon: A Tale of the Mid-Autumn Festival is an engaging mixture of contemportary family story and traditional folkloric retelling. In that sense, it reminded me strongly of the last picture-book devoted to the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival that I read, Loretta Seto's Mooncakes, which also featured family members (parents, in that case) relating the story of Hou Yi and Chang'e. Of course, in the Seto book, the variant of the story is the one in which Hou Yi is a cruel and dangerous villain, and Chang'e drinks the potion to protect it from him, whereas here Hou Yi is a hero. Leaving this similarity to the Seto book aside, I enjoyed Christina Matula's story (both parts of it), and appreciated the brief afterword, which gives more details about the festival, and includes a recipe for mooncakes. Although I didn't particularly care for Pearl Law's artwork here - it was just a little too cartoon-like for my taste - it was certainly colorful, and will no doubt keep many young listeners' attention. Recommended to anyone looking for children's stories about the Mid-Autumn Festival. ( )