Maurice the Moose

Maurice the moose is lonely and belts out a song as he wanders through the woodlands to let the world know. The song goes: WHOOOOOOOOANNN WHOOOOOOOOANNN WHOOOOOOOOANNN.

One day, he hears the same loud song being sung back to him from a distance. Hopeful that this could be a female moose, Maurice dashes towards the sound. He is disheartened and shocked upon the discovery that the song came from a hunter’s luring moose call. Prepared to take Maurice’s life, the hunter aims and shoots but hears a “click”, meaning that the gun was either not loaded or it misfired.

Suddenly, the tables are turned when a female moose emerges from the woods and charges towards the hunter. Filled with terror, the man runs all the way back to his neighbourhood where he stays.

Maurice bonds with his lifesaver and new friend. Together, they sing their woodland song which has now turned into an expression of their shared happiness rather than their loneliness: WHOOOOOOOOANNN WHOOOOOOOOANNN WHOOOOOOOOANNN.

This story is authored by experienced Canadian writer and performer, Lorne Elliott. In addition to having a radio show, writing plays and musicals, and authoring novels, Elliott now authors his first picture book. The title page, text, and images throughout this picture book make it seem at a glance as though this is going to be a sweet, heartwarming tale for a young audience. This is misleading even though there is a happy ending. The grey-haired, deceptive-looking hunter holding on to a large rifle indeed attempts to take a shot at Maurice the moose. The concept of hunting within this young children’s book is unexpected, but the ironic twist is that the hunter becomes the hunted after being fearfully chased back to his home.

The cartoon-like illustrations by Lori Joy Smith are lovable and appealing. Through exaggerated facial expressions, it is easy to read the characters’ emotions simply by looking at the images. Some may find the images to be a more desirable way to read the story as opposed to reading the sentences on the page which do not flow due to awkward word choices and improper conventions. For example, the author attempted to bundle rhyming words in groups of three (“gun”, “done”, “run”) at the end of the first few lines on almost every page, but there are some pages where it was unsuccessful but attempted anyways (“around”, “town”, “found”). There is no rhythm to the text, and, therefore, readers may go back and re-read certain lines thinking that it may have been misread. Additionally, the random improper capitalization, lowercase lettering, and missing punctuation in the middle and at the end of some sentences make it rather confusing for the reader and challenging to model reading fluency.

Granted, there is a positive message of unlikely friendship that emerges in the story as the female moose comes to rescue Maurice, and they become happy friends in the end. This does reflect the content-looking Maurice who is seemingly jumping for joy on a hill on the cover page (ironically, this is the exact same spot on the hill where he stood feeling helpless and terrified for his life).

Overall, Maurice the Moose would make for an adequate read-aloud for a young audience who may be particularly interested in or familiar with hunting, but it is not likely to be considered a favourite.