I'll Catch the Moon

A girl's fantasy of having a play date with the moon remains oddly earthbound in Crews's (One Hot Summer Day) latest photo-collage book. The author/artist melds oft-heard musings about the moon into an uninspired text, as her protagonist recalls the man in the moon, a man on the moon ""and a cow jumping over it"" and acts out her dream of climbing a ladder into outer space to get a closer look. Crews's collages, so vibrant in her previous book, appear hokey and staged here, and she combines photos without the sensitivity to scale shown in the similarly conceived The Ring (reviewed above). Photographs of the child are often fuzzy, and the girl's large full-color presence often clashes--rather than contrasts--with the sharp, monochromatic blue-black nighttime backgrounds. Ages 4-up. (May)