The Man in the Moon: The Guardians of Childhood by William Joyce (Atheneum/S&S, $17.99, 9781442430419, 56p., ages 4-8, September 6, 2011)
William Joyce invents a breathtaking landscape for his history of the original guardian of childhood: the Man in the Moon. As a baby, the little Man in the Moon, or MiM, as he is called, travels the intergalactic skies in the golden-sailed Moon Clipper with his mother, father and Nightlight, a kind of fairy godfather. Each night, the vessel transforms into the Moon. With the aid of a telescope, MiM's father introduces him to "the wonders of the heavens," while MiM's mother reads to him by the light of giant Glowworms, as Moonmice join the audience. Nightlight watches over the baby as he sleeps. With his open face and 
single perfectly placed curl, MiM resembles an otherworldly Gerber baby.
One day, chaos strikes the young hero's idyllic world. Pitch, the King of Nightmares, hunts down this legendary child who has never had a bad dream and tracks him to the Moon. The villain embodies a nightmare vision with his jet-black hair in up-floating coils as menacing as Medusa's snakes, and rendered in the shadowy shades of night. MiM's parents ask Nightlight to swear to guard their son, and he whisks MiM away to safety, but Pitch captures MiM's parents. As Nightlight plunges his diamond dagger into Pitch's heart, an explosion results. In a wordless spread of baby MiM, Joyce perfectly portrays a child too young to process the flash of brightness and sound. His wide-eyed wonder and surprise contrasts with the fear on the faces of the nearby Moonmice. When MiM later reaches the Moon's surface, he sees the image of his parents etched in the stars. Their constellation offers MiM comfort, and the moon creatures rally around to educate and protect the baby. Toque-topped Moonbots that call to mind gingerbread men bring his meals, he sleeps soundly on the back of a Lunar Moth with fluorescent wings, and the nattily dressed Moonmice in sailor suits hold him securely during flight. As the boy grows up, his angelic, trusting expression follows him into adulthood, as if to suggest that we all carry that childlike openness within us.
Fans of Joyce's oeuvre will note the parallels with his earlier tour de force about a mythic man in a magical land, Santa Calls. Santa rides in his sleigh; MiM flies on his moth. The Dark Queen and her Dark Elves threaten Santa's mission, just as Pitch and his Nightmares pose a challenge to MiM's utopia. Santa learns of children's wishes through letters; their hopes and dreams travel to MiM by helium balloons. The author-artist makes brief reference to the Man in the Moon's team of helpers on "the little green and blue planet" (the other Guardians, who will get their own spotlight in upcoming books). When MiM comes up with a solution to children's nighttime fears, he enlists the aid of the Moon's minions and his team of earthling Guardians (in addition to Santa, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, the Sandman, etc.). What happens to Pitch and Nightlight remains to be explored in subsequent episodes, but this first adventure offers a visual feast and a complete mythology of the Man in the Moon, and his mission to dispel the nightmares of the children on earth.
The idea of the Man in the Moon chasing away children's fears of the dark will be reassuring to young readers, but perhaps the story's greater gift will be the seeds of imagination as youngsters picture an entire world run by a protective gentleman whose face is etched on the moon's surface.