Eric Zhang's first U.S. title, I Want to Go to the Moon, is a wonderfully inspiring picture book starring a very hungry young mouse who, "for cheese, [is willing to] risk everything!"
"I must have it!" the tiny rodent declares, daring to climb atop a restaurant table for an alluring taste of holey Swiss. Shocked diners reel back; the wrathful staff's broom threatens. "Sadly, I fail. Another day without cheese..." the dejected mouse retreats, but remains buoyed by the story mice have told each other since ancient times "about the magical Cheese Mountain: an enormous, everlasting, golden piece of cheese." The tiny protagonist sees a poster of the glowing moon--"shiny" and "golden"--and thinks the lunar apparition must be the mountain where "every mouse is forever fed and full." With meticulous preparation and impressive engineering, the diligent adventurer is finally ready for take-off.
Zhang's artistry offers visual delights on every panel, page, and spread. The text, originally in Dutch and translated by the publisher, delivers the mouse's inner monologue, but the illustrations provide the most notable layers of the heartening narrative. A wall calendar showing May is affixed over the mouse's desk, implying the traveler has tenaciously worked for over a year since "winter and summer have come and gone." Zhang cleverly plays with scale, repeatedly celebrating the tiny being taking on behemoth challenges. His rarer close-ups of his hero particularly resonate, that final look of awed delight at the cheese surface of the moon underscoring the reminder "Dreams are always possible. Especially far-off dreams in the sky." --Terry Hong