Walking the Wall

I love the work of Patricia McKillip because her writing style is so beautifully lyrical that often times the pages are filled with more poetic prose than the atypical novel. Her books are easy to read over and over as there is always something just a little more under the layers to find, even just a hidden turn of phrase that catches you by surprise. While I’ve read Moon Flash more than once, it is such a small gem of a book, I’ve never enjoyed it so much as this time around.

“She knew all the secret places in the world–the bramble-cave in the forest, the pool beneath the falls where the great fish sunned, the hollow tree–for she had walked from the Beginning of world halfway to its End. The world began at the Face and ended at Fourteen Falls; it was bounded by forests, and the River ran through the center of it, giving life and carrying it away” (3).

I’ve said more than once that I have vivid memories of my father reading books to me and my siblings when I was younger, and I’ve always heard that people stop reading to their children too young–often times when they are old enough to read to themselves. But there is something different about having a book read out loud to you, all snuggled under blankets on the couch while the snow swirls around outside especially. My children are 17 and 15 and I still read out loud to them. It’s been a few months, as these past months have been so chaotic, but after the new year we decided we needed a new book. I picked Moon Flash randomly remembering it as a sweet story of transformation and identity–my daughter’s only stipulation is that it not have talking animals in it (she still hasn’t forgiven me for Watership Down–it’s a classic!).

“My mother went to Fourteen Falls and turned into a rainbow…

“She walked through the forest toward sunrise. She travelled from Flash to Flash across the world until–until…” Kyreol smiled. “She found a place-name. And the place-name was River-Tree” (4).

Two pages into the story and they were completely hooked and so was I. While I have read it before, I’ve never read it out loud and I have to say that it is a book that is perfectly crafted for reading out loud. While we lavishly used up half the book the first day, content to be inside and reading in the snowy weather–we’ve been doling the rest of it out chapter by chapter to make it last. Tomorrow, or rather later this morning, we’ll be finishing it up even though I’ve peeked and finished the last two chapters in the quiet while everyone is sleeping. Luckily there is a second small book that follows this one, we are always greedy for sequels and trilogies in this house–never content to leave characters after just one book.

I’m sure someday down the road my kids truly will grow too old to listen to books out loud, but for now, I need to get some sleep so I can wake up and read the end of Moon Flash to my children. The world is so much bigger than Kyreol ever imagined, and yet it still starts at the Face and ends at Fourteen Falls and in the smallest person’s story can be found truths that are as big as the whole universe.