ALA Booklist (Tue May 01 00:00:00 CDT 2018)

Against the backdrop of a black sky, Mama and Little Star bake a giant mooncake. But as she puts the cake out to cool, Mama admonishes her daughter not to touch it. And she doesn't til she wakes up in the night. Then, it's "pat, pat, pat" over to the mooncake, where she nibbles just a bit. Each night, there's more nibbling, causing the mooncake to change shape, until it's just a crescent. That's when Mama sees what's happened, but she isn't mad. It's just time to make another mooncake. Although the story is slight (and there's no direct aligning of the mooncake with the stages of the moon, either in text or note), the gouache illustrations are excellent. Mother and daughter, both dressed in star-covered black jumpsuits that add bits of light to inky backgrounds, are intriguing characters who come alive through facial expressions. Little Star's impish looks are worth the price of admission. This has no roots in Chinese mythology, Lin says, but she associates it with Asian moon festivals. A complementary read for those holidays.

Horn Book (Mon Apr 01 00:00:00 CDT 2019)

In the night sky, Little Star and her mother bake a mooncake, the sweet treat associated with the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival. As the Big Mooncake hangs to cool, the girl's hunger overcomes her. It's all mesmerizing: Little Star's astral home; her outsized sense of mischief; the dwindling, nibbled-upon cake as a stand-in for the waning moon; and Lin's pleasing, soothing text, perfect for reading aloud to little moon-watchers on Earth.

Publishers Weekly (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

Nighttime paintings by Lin (Where the Mountain Meets the Moon) add magic to this fable about why the moon waxes and wanes. The story-s events unfold against the velvety black of the night sky as Mama and Little Star, dressed in black pajamas spangled with yellow stars, work on their mooncake (an Asian holiday treat, Lin explains in an author-s note) in the kitchen. Mama takes the cake out of the oven and lays it -onto the night sky to cool.- She tells Little Star not to touch it, and Little Star attends but awakens in the middle of the night and remembers the cake. A double-page spread shows Little Star-s speculative glance on the left and the huge golden mooncake-or is it the round, golden full moon?-on the right. Whichever it is, Little Star takes a nibble from the edge, another the next night, and so on until the moon wanes to a delicate crescent. Lin successfully combines three distinctive and memorable elements: a fable that avoids seeming contrived, a vision of a mother and child living in cozy harmony, and a night kitchen of Sendakian proportions. Ages 4-8. (Aug.)