Over the Moon by Natalie Lloyd

Abstract

Reviewed by: Over the Moon by Natalie Lloyd Wesley Jacques Lloyd, Natalie Over the Moon. Scholastic, 2019 [304p] Trade ed. ISBN 978-1-338-11849-0 $16.99 E-book ed. ISBN 978-1-338-11850-6 $10.99 Reviewed from galleys Ad Gr. 4-6 Twelve-year-old Mallie Ramble wasn’t even alive yet when the Dust snuffed out the stars and brought monsters and gloom to Coal Top. Stories are still told of the time of light, when Forgotten Mountain was still Bright Mountain and craftspeople were able to weave starlight into cloth, but now men labor in the mines from a young age and women work as servants. Despite Mallie’s finding a job cleaning for a local family that mocks her prosthetic arm, Mallie and her family are on the verge of losing everything if her baby brother doesn’t go down into the mines like their father. Luckily an opportunity presents itself for “riches untold,” if only Mallie can master riding a Starbird (flying horse) and retrieve gold dust from mountaintops for the charismatic and well-dressed Mortimer Good—a name so on-the-nose it’s no surprise he turns out to be no good at all. This is unsophisticated fantasy but an unadorned lesson of youthful hope, and Lloyd writes with evocative directness. By the end, Mallie leads an army of young people in a battle to bring back the light, a fairly straightforward metaphor that could offer appeal to young readers just beginning to stretch their own fantasy wings. Copyright © 2019 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois