I just can’t get over how ridiculously cute Spoon and the Moon: A Naughty Fairy Tale is. Spoon and the Moon is the latest endeavor by Wickedly Sisters creative team, and it has Louisville all over it. It’s a tale set in Louisvillle, featuring Louisville artists and musicians, displayed as an E-book in app form. It’s also full of fun facts and history tidbits about the Derby city. The app is available through the Amazon App Store for android devices and is pure imagination untamed (for adult readers).
I really mean E-book on steroids, because that’s what it really is. It’s much more than text. The app has wonderfully decorative pages with colorful illustrations and borders. These aren’t just pretty pictures on a page, though. You can touch them for tidbits of interesting information, history, music, and sound effects by Lisa Wilbanks and Phillip Crowther. This is Wickedly Sisters first foray into digital literature, with assistance and tech support from Angie Graham; they’ve done a monumental job in raising the bar for other E-books.
In addition to the hidden goodies everywhere, the book has an occasional short video, comprised of animated illustrations and music by motion graphic artist Chris Johnson. My favorite is a video of an ant telling other ants about the lesbian lovers spread out on the blanket before them as if he is narrating a wildlife documentary.
Speaking of music, each of the chapter’s illustrated title pages is accompanied by folksy music by Jen Rose Fitzgerald, The Troubadours of Divine Bliss, Kri N Hettie, James Hicklin, Kate Larken, Sheila Marshall, Mishal Moore, Sarah Sharp, Karma Katz, and the Slackers. The violin by Steph Dlugon is a major part of the storyline, as a ferell cat violinist named Possibilities pops in regularly to stir things up (literally) with his moving melodies. It turns out that the cat is involved in just about everything. The music is moving and perfectly suited for the charming tale. The only wish I had for the music is that it would continue playing as you read all the pages, but I learned from this book that “wishes are dangerous”(especially when delivered from a foul mouthed wishing star).
![Hey Diddle Diddle takes Louisville art into the new age of digital literature [books]](/files/u979/star.jpg)
If the music played on all the pages, I guess the sound effects wouldn’t be as enjoyable. Too much of the moving violin riffs might have made them less hypnotizing and decreased the magical effect they had on everything around them: Fireflies swirl, ants throw honeysuckle bouqets, maggots march, sheds get up and walk away, and migrating geese find themselves forced to the ground for a dosey doe (dosado). Everything comes to life with music played by Possibilities.
