The Moonlight Zoo, by Maudie Powell-Tuck and Karl James Mountford

I don’t often do singular book reviews anymore, #mumof4, but this one deserves a little post all of its own.

The Moonlight Zoo is superbly illustrated and designed. The front cover will grab the attention of anyone who sees it, with fantastical nighttime colours and metallic detailing the publishers must know that everyone still judges a book by its cover. I saw the book on social networks and got my library to order it, but the online pictures honestly don’t convey the beauty of the real thing. On top of all this, the front cover has four cutouts that frame the illustrations on the title page and make the book a must open.

The cutouts continue right throughout the book transporting the reader from one page to the next, as they follow the main character, Eva, as she searches for her lost cat, Luna. A wolf leads Eva on her travels through the Moonlight Zoo, taking her to the various ‘enclosures’. For a zoo there are very few fences, the animals mostly seem to have free run of the place and Eva moves about safely in search of Luna, all of which suggests that the zoo is either in her dreams or her imagination.

The real standout feature of this book is the silent nod to a diverse representation of characters. Though I didn’t notice it in the photos, once I held the book the first thing I noticed was that Eva wears hearing aids. This fact is not all relevant to the story, it is not mentioned or alluded to in any way. Eva is the main character, having an experience many children might imagine for themselves, who also happens to use hearing aids.

My 3-year-old, Tobin is going to a kinder this year where half of the places are for hearing children and half are for children who also attend a school for the deaf. This means he interacts 6 hours every week with children and adults who have hearing aids, cochlear implants and who often use Auslan. It was very exciting for him to read this book and see a representation of what he is experiencing at kinder. I can only imagine how a child with a hearing impairment would feel seeing a book like this in a shop or library.