Moon Kite
Alexandra looks at the moon. Tonight the moon is as round as a ball, as round as an orange, as round as a balloon.
“I’m waiting for the moon to fall into my room. I’m going to keep it. I will tie some string around it and fly my ‘moon kite’ in the park. Nobody will be allowed to touch it,” Alexandra says to her mom. “Nobody but me.”
“The moon can’t fall through your window,” says Mom.
“Yes, it can, it will, and I am waiting for it,” says Alexandra.
Alexandra waits for the moon to fall every night. When the moon is a quarter full, Alexandra looks at it and thinks, “If the moon falls through my window tonight, I will use it as a slide or maybe a chair to rock in.”
When the moon is half full, Alexandra tells her brother, “We
can turn the moon around and use it as a sailboat, and you
can help me sail it. Will it fit in the bathtub?” “The moon is much too big to fall through your window, and it’s much, much too big to sail in the bathtub,” says her brother.
“Go away,” says Alexandra.
One night when the moon is full and as round as a cookie, Alexandra’s brother, whose name is Michael, says, “Come with me.”
They go downstairs and out into the yard. On the path there is
a big puddle that the rain made.“What can you see?” Michael asks his sister.
“The moon. The moon fell down from the sky into the puddle, and I’m going to pick it up.”
Alexandra kneels down on the path and tries to scoop up the moon, but it is too slippery, and the water slides through her fingers. She tries and tries, but she can’t scoop the moon out of the puddle.
“Help me, please,” Alexandra says.
“No, I can’t,” says Michael. “You are my little sister, and I like helping you, but not this time. The moon is for everyone, and if you take it into your room, the world will be too dark. Besides, this is only the moon’s reflection that you see in the water.”
“What’s that?” asks Alexandra.
“When you look in the mirror, what do you see?” asks her brother.
“I see me.”
“Yes. You see your reflection, but you are here, not in the glass. Look up. The moon is in the sky. It’s only the moon’s reflection in the puddle.”
Alexandra looks up in the sky, and there is the moon.
“The moon is smiling at me,” she says.
“Yes, it is,” says her brother. “Tomorrow I will give
you one of my balloons, the yellow one. We can tie a longer
string to it, and it will be like having your own little
moon.”The next morning Michael and Alexandra tie a long piece of string to the yellow balloon. Then they go to the park, and Alexandra flies her “moon kite” balloon. It looks like the moon in the sky, and Alexandra is holding it tight.
