A Fort on the Moon by Maggie Pouncey (review)

Narrator Dodge and his older brother, Fox, are old hands at space travel, having been to the Moon several times aboard The White Dolphin, which they constructed from household odds and ends. Tonight’s flight will be a bit different, since they have an agenda beyond exploration. Their ship is supplied with ribbons, tape, diggers, and whackers; bicycle helmets on and snowsuits zipped, the boys head to the roof when the house goes quiet and strap themselves into their old car seats installed on the Dolphin, and they’re off. Executing their mission on the Moon’s surface proves much harder than they figured; low gravity isn’t conducive to construction tasks, and Dodge is getting sleepy and whiny and anxious to get home. Perseverance pays off, though, and they build the fort that will be their base for further adventures. Pouncey pitches this at an audience just beginning to negotiate unreliable narrators and trickster authors, with a narrative that could supply a sophisticated reading that attributes the boys’ activities to imagination or dreams yet requires reconsideration when Mom mentions that the junk stored on the roof has gone missing. Day encourages this head scratching with lively mixed media artwork that revels in the cobbled-together spaceship and fort—wondrously inviting to build and to occupy—immersing viewers in make-believe play as prelude to Pouncey’s reveal that this might all have been the real deal.