Martha Brooks is a much-honoured children’s author, playwright, and jazz singer. In her first picture book, she celebrates the power of song. The musician is a young rabbit who has recently joined the choir for the community’s annual performance of the “Winter Moon Song,” part of an hour-long, indoor ceremony commemorating a mythic rabbit whose image can still be seen in the moon.

As much as he loves the singing, the rabbit is troubled by something about the performance. When he begins to sing the song quietly to himself outside, he realizes it is the connection to the full moon above that is missing from the ceremony. As the other rabbits join in the moonlit serenade, the message of the book becomes clear: joining with others in community ritual is good, but finding your voice and having the courage to sing alone, perhaps showing others the way to a new and more meaningful tradition in the process, is even better.

As she explains in the afterword, Brooks’s story is based on a Lakota version of the Moon Rabbit folk tales that appear around the world, especially in China, Japan, and Korea. In her retelling, Brooks presents the Creator figure as a Great Mother, and expands the story with the character of the young rabbit who leads his community to an increased feeling of togetherness.

Winter Moon Song is a wonderful tribute to music and the beauty of the winter landscape. The atmospheric watercolour-and- ink illustrations by Spanish artist Leticia Ruifernández skilfully convey the soft textures of fur and snow and the brilliance of a moonlit eve, while capturing the wisdom in an aged rabbit’s eye and the anxious innocence in a young one’s. As the story touches on the cycle of life, Ruifernández reinforces the concept wordlessly in the final picture, with a crocus blossoming through the snow.