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Research dossier · Arts & Letters

The Moon Jumpers

1960 Caldecott picture book

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJan 12, 2026
Entity authorityQ85807943 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Moon Jumpers is a 1959 picture book written by Janice May Udry and illustrated by Maurice Sendak. The book tells the story of some children playing at night in the summer. The book was a recipient of a 1960 Caldecott Honor for its illustrations.

Editorial summary

“The Moon Jumpers” enters the record as 1960 Caldecott picture book. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Moon, Jumpers and Caldecott can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1959, 1960—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Moon, Jumpers and Caldecott.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“The Moon Jumpers” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Moon, Jumpers and Caldecott provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q85807943. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1959 and 1960.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “The Moon Jumpers”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow The Moon Jumpers primary sources, The Moon Jumpers archive and Moon research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “The Moon Jumpers”?
  2. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
  3. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “The Moon Jumpers” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.