Full Cicada Moon by Marilyn Milton

2018-2019 Maud Hart Lovelace Nomination List

Genre:  Free Verse/Historical Fiction

Grade Level: 4^th – 8th

Reading Level: 4.7 (5 points) 400 pages

Publisher: Dial Books (September 8, 2015)

My Rating: 3 out of 4

Readability: Lots of white space/easy to read

MHL Division: Division 2 or Crossover

Summary: 
n 1969, twelve-year-old Mimi and her family move to an all-white town in Vermont, where Mimi's mixed-race background and interest in "boyish" topics like astronomy make her feel like an outsider.

Our group really liked this book, but I got stalled or distracted and took a while to finish it. I finally flew through it when I came a plot point where Mimi tries to take shop so she can learn how to build things for science projects. She is told she must take home economics, yet she explains, she already knows how to cook and sew! What her classmates do in an example of civil disobedience is delightful! Since, I was once a home economics teacher, I felt very connected to this part of the book. I also was reading this book around the time of the eclipse of the sun on August 21^st. Mimi is very interested in the moon and this is often a subject in the poetry. She dreams of being an astronaut someday. 

This book touches on diversity, dreams, science, history and gives students another chance to read poetry that creates a story. Most of the poems carry on the story but occasionally you find a page that is just a beautiful poetry picture.  I think this is a good reading choice.  I gave it a 3 just because I found it a bit difficult to connect with it at first.