Moonstick: The Seasons of the Sioux by Eve Bunting, John Sandford (Illustrator)

From the Publisher

My father cuts
a moon-counting stick
that he keeps in our tipi.
At the rising of the first moon
he makes a notch in it.
"A new beginning
for the young buffalo,"
he says.
"And for us."

In this beautifully written story by acclaimed author Eve Bunting, a young boy comes of age under the thirteen moons of the Sioux year. With each notch in his father's moon-counting stick, the boy marvels at the world around him, observing the sometimes subtle, sometimes remarkable changes in the seasons and in his own tribe's way of living. With rich and carefully researched paintings by artist John Sandford, Moonstick: The Seasons of the Sioux is a glorious picture book about one boy's journey toward manhood.

Children's Literature

Fans of Eve Bunting's books will not be disappointed with this beautiful story. A young Sioux boy comes of age under the thirteen moons of the Sioux year. The young boy's father notches his counting stick with the passing of each season as the tribe marks these occasions in their traditional ways. The full page illustrations enhance the beauty of this Native American story.

School Library Journal

K-Gr 3The 13 moons of the Sioux year are marked by notches on a "moonstick," by descriptive names ("Moon of the Thunderstorms," "Cherry-Ripening Moon"), and here by Bunting's poetic evocations of the seasons. The narrator is an unnamed boy, for whom the moons mark the time that must pass before he can hunt, dance, and wear snowshoes like his father and older brothers. Although the father observes philosophically that "life cannot be without sadness," for buffalo or for Sioux, pictures and text depict an idyllic wilderness existence, sans war, famine, or disease. In a style reminiscent of Impressionism, a muted, earth-tone palette, and varied viewpoints, Sandford shows his subjects' lives and activities. Travois, tipi, and parfleche (no words are defined) appear; dress and decoration are carefully delineated as the speaker celebrates the activities and ideas proper to each month. The two final spreads are unexpected. "Many winters have passed," notes the speaker, who is now old: he lives in town and does not hunt. The pictures show farms, roads, telephone lines, and tractorswithin the man's lifetime, an utter revolution. So mind-stretching is the sudden change that it may strike only adult readers. No matter, this is a lovely, elegiac book, a romantic paean to a vanished existence.Patricia Lothrop-Green, St. George's School, Newport, RI

Kirkus Reviews

Bunting (The Pumpkin Fair, p. 947, etc.) turns a sensitive eye to Sioux culture, depicting it truthfully and realistically while incorporating into the book a heartening message to any child whose ancestral ways have passed (even temporarily) into obscurity. The father of the first-person narrator notches a moon-counting stick at the beginning of each of the 13 moons of the Sioux year, a way to mark the passing of the year. Sandford's appealing, unsentimental illustrations link the notches to the passing seasons, from the Moon of the Birth of Calves, through the Cherry-Ripening Moon when the men take part in the Sun Dance, and the Sore-Eyes Moon when snow so dazzles the narrator that his father reassures him that "changes come and will come again. It is so arranged." Soon it is time for a new moonstick, but, in a brief page, readers understand that many moonsticks have come and gone: The child is grown, his culture passed away, and the narrator's livelihood comes from the sale of his wife's beadwork and his own headdresses—"We do not hunt." That's the poignant clincher, so it's a relief that the narrator takes his small grandson to cut a stick, to pass on his father's wisdom, to note that changes will come again. Expertly and beautifully told.

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