Wishing Moon

by Michael O Tunnell

Overview

After a fourteen-year-old orphan named Aminah comes to possess a magic lamp, the wishes granted by the genie inside allow her to alter her life by choosing prosperity, purpose, and romance. But she can achieve happiness only by escaping the vengeful princess who once possessed the lamp.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781460939192
Publisher:	CreateSpace Publishing
Publication date:	03/15/2011
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.63(d)
Lexile:	740L (what's this?)
Age Range:	12 - 17 Years

About the Author

Michael O. Tunnell's book titles include Mailing May, The Children of Topaz, and Wishing Moon. He teaches children's literature at Brigham Young University, and he has served on the selection committee for most prestigious award for excellence in writing for young readers, The Newbery Medal, as well as on the selection committee for the NCTE Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children. Tunnell also has published several professional books, including The Story of Ourselves: Teaching History Through Children's Literature and Children's Literature, Briefly, and has written articles for a variety of educational and literary journals. He and his wife, Glenna, live in Orem, Utah. They have four grown children.
Michael O. Tunnell writes picture books, informational books, and novels for primary, middle grade, and young adult readers. Many of his books are about historical topics, such as The Children of Topaz, a non-fiction, photo-essay about the Japanese-American internment camp located in Utah during World War II. It is based on an illustrated diary kept by a third grade class interned during 1943. Other examples include the picture book, Mailing May (illustrated by Ted Rand), which is the amazing true story of a five-year-old girl in Idaho who was mailed by parcel post to her grandmother in 1914 (an ALA Notable Book), and the novel, Brothers in Valor, based on the true story of three German teens who resisted Hitler during WWII (A Junior Library Guild Selection). He also writes fantasy, such as his ghost story, School Spirits. Tunnell's fantasy works also include his "Arabian Nights" novel titled Wishing Moon (Dutton, 2004), which received a starred review from Kirkus Reviews and won the Utah Book Award, and its sequel Moon Without Magic (2007). Candy Bomber: The Story of the Berlin Airlift's "Chocolate Pilot"--a non-fiction, photo-essay about American pilot who dropped candy-laden parachutes to children during Berlin Airlift, was published in 2010 and received a starred review from Booklist. Other titles include the picture books Chinook!, The Joke's on George, Halloween Pie, and Beauty and the Beastly Children, as well as The Prydain Companion, a guide to Lloyd Alexander's Prydain Chronicles.

Editorial Reviews

Gr 5-9-In this expansion of a story from the "Arabian Nights," Tunnell tells how Aminah, who has been struggling to survive after the death of her parents, comes to be hit on the head by Aladdin's lamp. Near starvation, the 14-year-old goes to the Sultan's palace to ask his daughter, who is Aladdin's wife, for help. Annoyed at being approached by a beggar, Princess Badr throws the dented old lamp at Aminah without realizing its worth. Before long, the girl figures out how to summon the jinni and uses her newfound powers to improve her own lot and the world around her. Aminah is perspicacious enough to determine the rules of the jinni's magic and work them to her advantage, but her naivet causes her to miscalculate the impact her new riches will have on others. Moreover, Princess Badr has come to understand the lamp's value and is exerting her influence to get it back, which puts Aminah in constant peril. Add a love story and a jealous would-be lover to the mix and all the requirements of a satisfying fairy-tale elaboration are satisfied. While not as well written as, say, Robin McKinley's Beauty (HarperCollins, 1978) or Spindle's End (Putnam, 2000), this novel is fast-moving and suspenseful enough to hold readers' interest.-Miriam Lang Budin, Chappaqua Public Library, NY Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

School Library Journal

starred review

In this captivating original sequel to Aladdin, the genie gets a real workout when its lamp falls into the hands of an orphaned street child. Fourteen-year-old Aminah's bleak future takes a wild turn for the better when an old lamp sails out of the palace window and hits her on the head. But rather than use her wishes to live in splendor or to punish enemies, Aminah flummoxes the genie by searching out decent-hearted people engaged in helping the poor and endowing them with magical abilities. Predictably, the petulant, mercurial genie-who tends to show anger by spitting snakes, or blowing up its own head-steals the show, but Aminah puts in a sturdy performance too, as an idealistic but not entirely naive do-gooder with a temper of her own, and plenty of gumption. Modern sounding dialogue-"I wish you'd settle down!"-and the genie's breezily cryptic references to pizza, New York, and other items from Aminah's future give the tale a contemporary tone without spoiling the Arabian Nights flavor. Tunnell adds suspense with a subplot involving the efforts of Aladdin's evil wife to recover the lamp, and closes with a perfectly executed twist. (Fiction. 11-15)

Kirkus Reviews