Once Upon a Full Moon.

Lisa Arsenault is a high-school English teacher who is involved in
several ministry campaigns to increase literacy.

In the 1920s, a Chinese family from Canada makes a journey back to China in this picture book for children. They are returning to the father’s family village in the countryside to visit his mother. It is the true story of the author and watercolourist, Elizabeth Quan.

The journey takes almost a month and employs many modes of transportation, including by foot and rickshaw. Along the way, Quan evokes, both through prose and her watercolours, the various essences of the places the family passes through: the mountains of the West Coast, the whales in the Pacific, the hubbub of Hong Kong, and the peace and tranquility of the old family home in the Chinese countryside.

All these impressions are realistically filtered through the eyes of a young girl who is the product of two cultures (evidenced by the food they eat on the journey — a combination of North American and Chinese). Quan does a good job of showing how strange the sights and sounds of the Orient were to a child raised in North America.

This is an interesting travel book for young children. They will enjoy the unfolding of events, vistas, and scenes as the family travels west. The illustrations are simple, verging on line drawing, but colourful and representative of the text. The wide sweep of geography is tied together by the omnipresent moon, in all its phases, shining benignly down on the family. Recommended.