Joel Blackie - 'Nobody Owns the Moon'

Image courtesy of http://www.tohby.com/HomelinkNOTMNotes.html

Tohby Riddle’s ‘Nobody Owns the Moon’.

This text tells the story of two individuals and their day to day living in ‘the city’ and how just for one night both Clive the fox and Humphrey the donkey are able to view the city from a different perspective. The story is introduced at first in a non-fiction format, detailing the success that a wild fox has in adapting to city living in the real world (though the facts are complimented with fictional pictures of a bipedal fox wearing a collared shirt). This is a beautiful combination as the sentence that describes the fox naturally being ‘quick witted’ is accompanied by Clive relaxing whilst completing a crossword puzzle.

The story reflects both the hardships and beauty of city living, done so through varied illustrative mediums (cut outs, pen and pencil, photographic images, water colours etc.) that does well to capture the tone of the book. I.e. greys and dull colours to represent the presented idea of Humphreys personal troubles, with warm vibrant colours used when the duo spend an evening at the theatre.

My personal favourite page of the book has Clive searching for his ‘home challenged’ friend in the park, finding him ‘sitting beneath a statue of a great conqueror’ (appears to be Napoleon) that bears the insignia ‘Ad Astra per Aspera’ which (compliments of Wikipedia) roughly can translate to “Through hardships to the stars”. It is in my opinion a well-placed meaning making image and text choice that foreshadows the events of the book and adds that extra bit of charm to the book.

A great read.

Joel Blackie.