New Book Review: Sara and the Moonlight Rescue

Title: Sara and the Moonlight Rescue 

Author: J.B. Moonstar

Date: 2024

Publisher: Little Horsemen

ISBN: 979-8-8232-0349-4 for the e-book 

Quote: "Finding Angela’s claw, Sara’s father made it into a necklace and gave it to Sara. He told her it would protect her from evil, but she must not let anyone know she had the necklace."

The author bio on this book tells us that J.B. Moonstar has some experience rescuing animals. How that's done, in the real world, is often mundane, tedious, even bureaucratic. You get up in the middle of the night to drip one or two drops of baby animal food into the animal's mouth. You get scratched, bitten, stepped on, and covered in animal body effluvia. You might get reported for cruelty while you're trying to feed a starved horse or cow, because the animal is gaining a lot of weight very slowly and continues to look starved for a few months of generous feeding. You might carry the animal around in your pocket for weeks while it's small, then, a year later, realize that the attack that's covered you in surface wounds was not friendly play but a serious message that the animal needs to be released into the wild and never see you again. You might report the animal to a bureaucrat who's supposed to be an expert and have the bureaucrat threaten you with fines for bringing it inside your home. You're sure to encounter, these days, the toxic attitudes of PETA types who froth about how vile you are for having any relationship with any animal other than watching videos of it in a government-owned preserve that's closed to commoners like you, where only a few of the elite ever see the living animal. 

So instead Moonstar has chosen to write these novels for young readers--Sara still gets called "little girl" and her pal Knocker, though no longer little, is still a "boy" and a "teenager"--about the way rescuing animals is not done. This series is about rescuers' fantasies. 

Here is none of the distress real animal rescuers feel when we can't help an animal because it might kill itself in its frantic effort to get away from us. Sara carries the magic tiger claw necklace through which the ghost of Angela, a murdered but still human-friendly tiger, guides her and helps her talk to the animals. She doesn't have to think about safe ways to transport tiger cubs, because she can talk to the tiger cubs exactly the way she'd talk to children for whom she was baby-sitting. They understand so perfectly that they tell her their Anglo-human-type names.

Here is none of the fear real animal rescuers reasonably feel about confronting real animal abusers. Sara and her friends Knocker and Megan are no ordinary teenagers. They can be invisible, or change their shapes, or change the shapes of other people. The battles they fight don't involve literal, physical violence, but with powers like that, there'd be no more suspense about the outcome if the kids had to fight against armies. 

Here, also, and inevitably, is very little of the joy we feel when real tigers can be rescued from poachers, poisons, diseases or injuries. Tigers aren't dangerous animals these kids have to approach with caution, respect, and lots of gradually built experience. The tiger cubs are no more mysterious, or formidable, or awe-inspiring to Sara than a Cub Scout den would be. 

I don't know as I like this approach to animal rescue any more than the "how to report a wild animal to bureaucrats who'll make sure you don't get close to it" approach, and this novel doesn't even feature a character whose disability provides the character with an asset. It's not "high fantasy" where we feel the numinous awesome qualities either of real animals like tigers or of fabulous ones like dragons. It's pure wish-fulfillment daydream. 

Another thing about this book I don't like is that it's about tigers, but it's not about a place where tigers really live. The default background for a tiger story would be India, and at least a consultant for the story should have been born and mostly brought up there. There are other options; for them, too, the story ought to have an indigenous consultant and some history and ecology. This story never specifies whether it's taking place in India or China or the San Diego zoo. Tigers are south Asian animals but these tigers, for whom stuffed toys are successfully substituted, might as well be stuffed toys for all they have to teach readers.

I do see how this kind of fantasy would suggest itself to someone who was actually trying to feed orphan squirrels. It's a nice, warmhearted daydream that would appeal to a nice, warmhearted person, like the one adults are trying to reach, or awaken, or find some evidence of the existence of, within a sullen teen-troll. This story would be fun to read in school, or on the bus. It's not Tolkien or Lewis Carroll or Harry Potter, but it's fun.