Simont worked with Thurber on a number of picture books, including Thirteen Clocks and Wonderful O, and was a close personal friend of Thurber. Though Slobodkin's illustrations won the Caldecott, the book was reprinted in 1990 with illustrations by Marc Simont. In typical Thurber style the story is full of funny situations, witty lists and hilarious backtalk. This is an intelligent story, one that adults may laugh at as much as (or more than) children. You have to love a picture book that takes children seriously enough to include the word "surfeit" in its opening lines. The one person the King has forgotten to ask is-Princess Lenore herself. But the wise Court Jester may have the solution. The King is most distressed, for nobody knows how to get the moon. The King is determined to get it for her, but neither the Lord High Chamberlain nor the Royal Wizard nor the Royal Mathematician can obtain it, though they have procured for the King any number of other things such as blue poodles, ambergris, gold from the rainbow, the square of the hippopotamus, two dozen eggs, and a sack of sugar-sorry, the Lord High Chamberlain's wife wrote those last two. The Princess Lenore has fallen ill of "a surfeit of raspberry tarts." She claims that she will only be made well again if she can have the moon. "Never mind the blue poodles," said the King.
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