Bonnie Stanard

Tenth Full Moon Bonnie Stanard

Tenth Full Moon is a 34-page picture book for children ages 4-8. It's a modern fairy tale with stunning illustrations on every page. Fairview's woods crackle with noises when the weather turns cold, and people think it's crows flying to the land of Poe. But that's not the real story, which involves Carmina, a harmless little old lady and coincidentally a witch. The magic of each tenth full moon gives her breath to live from year to year. On this particular night, the moon hums behind the trees, a cabbage casts a spell, the wind tastes of spirits. Carmina doesn't notice, but her cats do. At supper time she chooses to cook a possum that she caught in a trap. She skins the possum and puts it into her cook pot. The cabbage she took from a weedy garden turns red in the veins and she suspects it of being hexed. Out the door it goes. As the possum cooks on her kerosene stove, a terrible stink arises and worries the cats, not to mention Carmina. Another hex? She throws the pot and the possum out the door. Her cat Caster yowls at the big moon that's coming up, which gets Carmina's attention. She licks the wind to try to figure out what's going on and discovers the taste of swamp spirits. At last she realizes it's the tenth full moon. She sends out a call on the wind to the Edisto swamp where spirits sleep in the mud. They glide through the woods leaving behind a briny smell. Foxes and wolves are frightened by this unusual smell and run and hide in their dens, which causes the woods to crackle. Around a blazing fire, the spirits rattle bones, chant, and call down the moon's magic. In return for their help, Carmina wanders the woods with them, trying to find human bodies they can share.