Caldecott Monday: Kitten’s First Full Moon

[osprey_archer]

Kevin Henkes must work some kind of magic on awards committees, because he won the 2004 Caldecott Medal with a book that is, admittedly, adorable – Kitten’s Fire Full Moon is about a kitten who believes that the moon is a saucer full of milk and goes to increasingly cute lengths to get it – but somehow I expect something more of Caldecott book than “adorable.”

Maybe they were won over by the black and white illustrations. Everything looks more serious and important in black and white.

He also won a Newbery Honor medal for Olive’s Ocean, which, again, is a perfectly fine book, but also basically the book equivalent of Oscar bait. It’s about death! But in a hopeful, uplifting, live-life-to-the-fullest kind of way! And there’s some pretty nature, although not to the extent that anyone would gush “The ocean is practically another character!” as movie reviewers are sometimes wont to do. (I’m not sure if anyone says that about the ocean, actually. I’ve seen it about cities and about mountains. I recall quite a few Brokeback Mountain reviewers flinging themselves onto the mountain shots with glad cries, presumably because mountains have no sexualities to speak of.)

Anyway: a cute book about a kitten. Possibly trying a little too hard to make you go “Awwwwwww,” but still cute.

Comments

[thisbluespirit]

Well, it's the illustrations and not the story, and I suppose there's nothing to say that 'cute' can't also be most outstanding of the year, but sometimes it's inexplicable.

[osprey_archer]

Kevin Henkes both wrote and illustrated Kitten's First Full Moon. He's a triple threat! (I'm not sure what the third part of a triple threat would be for an author/illustrator... Hmm.)

[asakiyume]

Makes me wonder about the relationship between whatever's going on in a given year and the choice of book, too. Like... I can't remember what in particular was happening in 2004 beyond Iraq and Afghanistan, but maybe those things made the committee really want cute--or maybe the concept of cute came up in discourse a lot that year or who knows? Things like that.

[osprey_archer]

I wonder if they release the minutes of the award meetings at some point (presumably once a certain amount of time has passed), or if they just stay under lock and key forever. I'd be super curious to hear the reasoning behind some of the decisions. Maybe the committee just had a lot of cat lovers in 2005! Who knows?