Grace Lin: Hello this is Grace Lin and I am the author and illustrator of the book A Big Mooncake for Little Star. So I'm going to tell you a little bit about the book and then I'll share an excerpt with you.

When my daughter Hazel was three years old, we celebrated the moon festival for the first time. The moon festival is my favorite Chinese holiday. It's kind of like a Chinese thanksgiving, except instead of turkey, you eat mooncakes and you all go out and you admire the moon. I though that this would be a festival or Chinese holiday that Hazel would really get into because the way you celebrate is by eating those mooncakes and by telling stories about the moon when you look at it.

At the moon festival, Hazel discovered the joy of mooncakes and she loved the sweet taste inside and the mold of design, and she ate all the ones we had. But when she discovered that she had eaten them all, and there would be no more until next year, she was devastated as only a three-year-old can. It's drama, tears, regret, she was like, oh, I shouldn't have eaten them, I should have saved one, I'll never see another mooncake again. And so, to comfort her, I said, "Yes, yes, you'll see another mooncake." And I showed her photos of moon cakes online. And it was there we discovered many different kinds of mooncakes. Some were flat, some were pale, some had no designs and then there was one Hazel said, that looked just like the real moon.

When she said that, all of a sudden a little seed of an idea came to me, and that became this book, A Big Mooncake for Little Star. I haven't done a picture book in eight years. I've been doing a lot of novels and writing a lot of middle grade, and its been a really, really lovely return, I forgot how great it was to read to such a young audience and to connect to such a young audience again.

What really touched me was how this book has been used in schools and how teachers have been sharing this book. When I read this book out loud to younger audiences, I do this pantomime where we bake our own imaginary mooncakes before I read the book, and they get so excited, and they all want to celebrate the moon festival at home. And teachers have used, taken this small story and they've made it into something so much larger. They've used the book as a jumping off point to teach kids about holidays like the moon festival, and they also used it for things like science and math. They've used the book to teach students about the phases of the moon, with students making moon phases with play dough and Oreo cookies, and I even have some of those activities on my website.

So here is and excerpt from the book. This is A Big Mooncake For Little Star.

Little Star's momma made the big mooncake onto the night sky to cool. "Now Little Star," momma said, "your mooncake took us a long time to bake, so let's see if you can make it last a while. Can you remember not to touch this big mooncake until I tell you to?" "Yes momma," Little Star said nodding. And Little Star remembered, as she brushed her teeth, washed her face, snuggled into bed and fell asleep. But in the middle of the night Little Star woke up.

She forgot everything her momma had said and only remembered the big mooncake.

Pat, pat, pat, Little Star soft feet tiptoed to the big mooncake.