Richie’s Picks: THE MOON WITHOUT STARS
Richie Partington
Richie’s Picks: THE MOON WITHOUT STARS by Chanel Miller, Penguin Random House/Philomel, January 2026, 256p., ISBN: 978-0-593-62455-5
“After school, I swung open my locker and out slipped a lime green Post-it Note, drifting down like a leaf. It was covered in scraggly handwriting that read:
HELP ME–LUCIFER’S DEAD
A prickly feeling traveled down my spine. Lucifer who?
The name sounded familiar, but my mind was coming up empty. Then I heard sniffling, turned around, and there was Arjun, in his pleated shorts with his face in his hands, weeping full on. He lifted his head, looked me straight in the eye, and whispered, ‘Dead, he’s dead!’ then dropped to his knees, shoulders shaking up and down, that’s how hard he was crying. Then it hit me: Lucifer, of course. He was not somebody’s friend or parent or even grandparent; Lucifer was Arjun’s guinea pig. Arjun was totally torn up about it. Even I was, a little bit.
Last year Arjun brought Lucifer to school on Halloween, draping him in brown fabric with two eyeholes cut out. Imagine this blinking brown cylinder, walking on a leash. People were yelling, POOP ON A LEASH!! And Arjun kept saying, STOPP, HE’S A POTATO!! After that they referred to Lucifer as Poop-tato and called Arjun the boy with the scuttling turd.
You had to give Arjun credit for this stuff, hand-sewing vegetable costumes for rodents.”
Shortly before beginning seventh-grade, main-character Luna, accepts the offer of a mountain of books from the family of a former classmate, an apparently-avid reader, who has recently died after a lengthy illness. Reading nonstop for weeks until school begins, Luna finds herself prepared to then help schoolmates struggling with problems–beginning with the dead rodent situation–by gifting them a book that relates to that schoolmate’s problem. She’s become the resident book doctor!
When she eventually gets stuck, having no obvious book for helping a classmate who has been humiliated by June, the popular girl, Luna and her lifelong friend and confidant Scott (a budding artist!) put together a little handmade zine that empowers and delights the scorned classmate. Word gets around, leading to Luna receiving a stream of locker notes from students dealing with all sorts of personal challenges. She and Scott begin regularly spending lunchtimes plying their new craft and helping their fellow students.
Thus, inch by inch, readers see how Luna finds herself becoming an author amidst the travails of seventh grade which, for her, include her first period and her first kiss.
“Turns out seventh grade was complicated because the number 7 was shaped like a cliff, and all of us were suddenly dropping off the safe, flat land of childhood into free fall. We were tumbling, arms flailing, unsure how any of us were going to land on our feet.”
The question readers will be asking, halfway through, is whether Luna and Scott’s super-close, utterly-innocent, lifelong relationship can survive their falling off the cliff:
“Something had changed; it felt like we were in a play, performing the roles of Scott and Luna, while our real selves were stirring, uncertain, below the surface.”
And what happens when Luna gets mixed up with popular, rich (and quite nasty) June?
THE MOON WITHOUT STARS is a powerful, first-rate, coming-of-age tale. It’s a must-have for any collection serving tweens.
Richie Partington, MLIS
Richie's Picks http://richiespicks.pbworks.com