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The Garden Behind the Moon
In the fishing village where he lives, David sits alone by the shore at night, watching the path of light that stretches across the sea until it almost touches the moon. Wondering, Where does it go? Then one day he hears a voice of the Moon-Angel.
Why not try the moon-path tonight?
As David will discover, the glimmering moonlit path leads to a magical world behind the moon-a beautiful garden. And golden riches and a great flying horse to whisk him back to earth. But first he will have to battle a giant.
Why not try the moon-path tonight?
As David will discover, the glimmering moonlit path leads to a magical world behind the moon-a beautiful garden. And golden riches and a great flying horse to whisk him back to earth. But first he will have to battle a giant.
128 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1895
53 people are currently reading
574 people want to read
About the author
Howard Pyle
756 books315 followersHoward Pyle was an American illustrator and author, primarily of books for young people.
During 1894 he began teaching illustration at the Drexel Institute of Art, Science and Industry (now Drexel University), and after 1900 he founded his own school of art and illustration named the Howard Pyle School of Illustration Art. The term Brandywine School was later applied to the illustration artists and Wyeth family artists of the Brandywine region by Pitz. Some of his more famous students were N. C. Wyeth, Frank Schoonover, Elenore Abbott, Ethel Franklin Betts, Anna Whelan Betts, Harvey Dunn, Clyde O. DeLand, Philip R. Goodwin, Violet Oakley, Ellen Bernard Thompson Pyle, Olive Rush, Allen Tupper True, and Jessie Willcox Smith.
His 1883 classic publication The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood remains in print, and his other books, frequently with medieval European settings, include a four-volume set on King Arthur. He is also well known for his illustrations of pirates, and is credited with creating the now stereotypical modern image of pirate dress. He published an original novel, Otto of the Silver Hand, in 1888. He also illustrated historical and adventure stories for periodicals such as Harper's Weekly and St. Nicholas Magazine. His novel Men of Iron was made into a movie in 1954, The Black Shield of Falworth.
Pyle travelled to Florence, Italy to study mural painting during 1910, and died there in 1911 from a kidney infection (Bright's Disease).
His sister Katharine Pyle was also a writer and illustrator. Their mother was the children's author and translator M.C. Pyle.
During 1894 he began teaching illustration at the Drexel Institute of Art, Science and Industry (now Drexel University), and after 1900 he founded his own school of art and illustration named the Howard Pyle School of Illustration Art. The term Brandywine School was later applied to the illustration artists and Wyeth family artists of the Brandywine region by Pitz. Some of his more famous students were N. C. Wyeth, Frank Schoonover, Elenore Abbott, Ethel Franklin Betts, Anna Whelan Betts, Harvey Dunn, Clyde O. DeLand, Philip R. Goodwin, Violet Oakley, Ellen Bernard Thompson Pyle, Olive Rush, Allen Tupper True, and Jessie Willcox Smith.
His 1883 classic publication The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood remains in print, and his other books, frequently with medieval European settings, include a four-volume set on King Arthur. He is also well known for his illustrations of pirates, and is credited with creating the now stereotypical modern image of pirate dress. He published an original novel, Otto of the Silver Hand, in 1888. He also illustrated historical and adventure stories for periodicals such as Harper's Weekly and St. Nicholas Magazine. His novel Men of Iron was made into a movie in 1954, The Black Shield of Falworth.
Pyle travelled to Florence, Italy to study mural painting during 1910, and died there in 1911 from a kidney infection (Bright's Disease).
His sister Katharine Pyle was also a writer and illustrator. Their mother was the children's author and translator M.C. Pyle.
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
January 15, 2016
Howard Pyle was a renowned author who made his mark in the 19th century with a number of books for young adults on such figures as Robin Hood and King Arthur. In 1889 his son Sellers died unexpectedly. In 1895 he wrote a children's fantasy called The Garden Behind the Moon. The book is about what awaits children beyond this mortal coil.
Young simpleton David lives in a fishing village and spends his days caring for his infant sister and listening to the stories of a fellow simpleton, a cobbler named Hans. Hans tells David tales of the path to the moon, the gardens behind the moon, and the Master Cobbler - also known as the Moon-Angel, also known as the Angel of Death. David finds his way there, spends some time polishing stars for the Man in the Moon, meets the frightening but kindly Moon-Angel, and takes vacations from his work by visiting those gardens behind the moon - a place where children romp and play, forever young.
The book is a light fantasy with a melancholy tone and some dark themes. It is a sweet book as well.There have been few things so moving in literature for me to contemplate than thinking about Pyle writing this book for his lost son, imagining a place beyond where his child could live and play, have adventures and learn a purpose, find a girl and eventually be united with her. So wistful and yet so hopeful. I find that I'm tearing up even as I write this, thinking about Pyle. Well I can be a sentimental chap at times.
The darkness is ever present as well. The opening chapter describes a good queen finally getting her heart's desire - a daughter. The Moon-Angel is happy to give her this gift, but he takes something in return - the queen's life.
Later, while living in the house of the Man in the Moon, David comes across some windows where he can look at the world below. He sees many things, including a slave ship where a dead mother and her still living infant are tossed into the ocean as so much dead weight. It is a horrible scene for the boy to witness, and the reader as well. But there is yet a place for the mother and her child, behind the moon.
One of the many things that fascinated me within this novel is how Pyle transforms Adam and Eve's apple into the Box and the Book, and how he changes their fall from grace into something else entirely, something more complex. It was a good deed when Lucifer brought them them both Box and Book. Opening the Wonder Box, eating that apple, Pandora and her box as well... such things are necessary. Such things are not bad things.
And what knowledge lies within the Know-All Book?
Howard Pyle was also an innovative illustrator lauded by many, including Vincent van Gogh. Van Gogh wrote that Pyle's work "struck me dumb with admiration".
Young simpleton David lives in a fishing village and spends his days caring for his infant sister and listening to the stories of a fellow simpleton, a cobbler named Hans. Hans tells David tales of the path to the moon, the gardens behind the moon, and the Master Cobbler - also known as the Moon-Angel, also known as the Angel of Death. David finds his way there, spends some time polishing stars for the Man in the Moon, meets the frightening but kindly Moon-Angel, and takes vacations from his work by visiting those gardens behind the moon - a place where children romp and play, forever young.
The book is a light fantasy with a melancholy tone and some dark themes. It is a sweet book as well.There have been few things so moving in literature for me to contemplate than thinking about Pyle writing this book for his lost son, imagining a place beyond where his child could live and play, have adventures and learn a purpose, find a girl and eventually be united with her. So wistful and yet so hopeful. I find that I'm tearing up even as I write this, thinking about Pyle. Well I can be a sentimental chap at times.
The darkness is ever present as well. The opening chapter describes a good queen finally getting her heart's desire - a daughter. The Moon-Angel is happy to give her this gift, but he takes something in return - the queen's life.
Later, while living in the house of the Man in the Moon, David comes across some windows where he can look at the world below. He sees many things, including a slave ship where a dead mother and her still living infant are tossed into the ocean as so much dead weight. It is a horrible scene for the boy to witness, and the reader as well. But there is yet a place for the mother and her child, behind the moon.
"Ah! yes, little child. For there is as much joy and gladness over one poor black woman who enters into that place as there is over the whitest empress who ever walked the earth..."David on the moon and in the gardens is only the first half of the book. The second half involves a quest, and this is where the book gets even stranger. David learns that the Moon-Angel is not just the Angel of Death - he is also Lucifer the light bringer, day-star, son of the morning. To find a child he met in the garden - the daughter of the first chapter's queen - David must go to a place few have been: behind the wings of the Angel of Death. And there he will find a black-winged horse and two kindly old women and a fearsome Iron Man, and from there he must bring back the Wonder Box and the Know-All Book. Adam and Eve once opened the Wonder Box and fled from what emerged, fled before they could even open the Know-All Book.
One of the many things that fascinated me within this novel is how Pyle transforms Adam and Eve's apple into the Box and the Book, and how he changes their fall from grace into something else entirely, something more complex. It was a good deed when Lucifer brought them them both Box and Book. Opening the Wonder Box, eating that apple, Pandora and her box as well... such things are necessary. Such things are not bad things.
And what knowledge lies within the Know-All Book?
"when we grow up we shall be married; when we are married we shall grow up; when we are married there shall be joy; hence there shall be joy when we are married." Thus it was from the beginning to the end of all there was in the book.The prose and imagery are sublime. The book manages to be almost heartbreakingly sentimental while also being - in the words of another reviewer - deliciously creepy. It was an enchanting experience for me.
Howard Pyle was also an innovative illustrator lauded by many, including Vincent van Gogh. Van Gogh wrote that Pyle's work "struck me dumb with admiration".
June 27, 2025
A very readable, intriguingly allegorical story. I enjoyed the musings of the author about heaven and hell and sorrow and joy, though not everything was a perfect one-to-one allegory.
This edition had several typos where "b" was substituted with "h".
This edition had several typos where "b" was substituted with "h".
December 4, 2018
A Beautiful, Sweet, and Strange Fairy Tale
Howard Pyle's The Garden Behind the Moon: A Real Story of the Moon-Angel (1895) is an allegorical fairy tale about death, life, love, imagination, and growing up. The narrator tells the "true" story of a boy called David who is mocked and ostracized by the other children in his village for being a "moon-calf" simpleton. With help from the village idiot, the cobbler Hans Krout, David walks the moon-path over the sea, "stretching from the moon to the earth, and from the earth to the moon, as bright as silver and gold, and as straight and smooth as a turnpike road." Then he encounters the House-in-the-moon (wherein much polishing of stars goes on), the Man-in-the-moon (a wise, pipe-smoking, silvery-wrinkle faced old man), the Moon-Angel (a sublime and scary being who likes to make old things new), and the Garden Behind the Moon (wherein happy—dead—children play free from care).
The story also involves a princess (whose birth was a gift from the Moon-Angel with a cost), a little old lady with a red petticoat (who washes people's dirty souls and hangs them out to dry like snow white sheets on a line), a Black Horse with white wings (from "those lofty altitudes of the still blue heavens where he forever circles, dips, hovers in airy and ambient brightness"), and an impossible quest to attempt to steal the Wonder-box and Know-All Book from the Iron Man in his Iron Castle and to bring them back to "the brown earth" where they belong.
The story features much wisdom, often of a paradoxical nature: it's better to see things from the inside than from the outside; it's necessary to feel the greatest sorrow to be able to experience the greatest joy; "sometimes there is more solid truth in a little nonsense than in a whole peck of potatoes"; and in matters of the fantastic, the harder you try to achieve something the more you fail, the more you try to remember something the more you forget it, and the more you try to tell something the more your speech disintegrates.
Pyle reveals an appealing humility, valuing the manual and humble labor of shoe making more than his own writing and illustrating: "to this day I believe it takes more wits to cobble a pair of shoes than to write a big book, and more cleverness to make a good wax-end than to draw a picture with a lead-pencil."
Furthermore, despite glorifying the white male hero, Pyle's book has interesting things to say about gender (e.g., Eve and Adam are very different than Adam and Eve) and race (e.g., "For there is as much joy and gladness over one poor black woman who enters into that place as there is over the whitest empress who ever walked the earth of Christendom").
Pyle writes much sublime description, like this:
"The Black Horse gave a great neigh like the peal of a trumpet. Clashing his hoofs upon the rocks, he spread his wonderful white wings, and, leaping into the air, flew clapping and thundering away—away—away—now circling and soaring in upward spiral flight, until he became a spot upon the sky—twinkled—was lost—was there was gone."
He also writes some scary description, like this:
"Then he [the Iron Man] sat down to the table and began to eat and drink, carving the meat with the iron knife as long as a scythe, and thrusting it into his mouth with the fork as large as a pitch fork, and drinking great draughts of ale out of the huge goblet. The ale hissed and sputtered as it went down his iron throat, and a white cloud of steam came out of his nostrils. "
Although the story looks forward to adult love ("When we grow up we shall be married"), Pyle wrote it after the death of his young son, and it is quite moving to imagine him trying to come to terms with his loss by writing this fantasy ("the more sad the outside, the more beautiful almost always is the inside") and to get the reader to begin imagining his or her own death: "You yourself will see how it is some day, for everybody looks out of a moon window sooner or later, and this is not all nonsense either."
Anyone who likes Pyle's more famous and accessible books should give this one a try to round out their understanding of the great author and illustrator. As Perry Nodelman said about The Garden Behind the Moon, it "seems to be as dreamy, as vague, and as mystical as Men of Iron and The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood are plain and practical—as 'sweet and thin and clear' as the other books are loud and boisterous." And anyone who likes allegorical fairy tales like At the Back of the North Wind or Water-Babies should try this one.
Although there is a version sold on audible.com, I found the reader's voice in the sample too syrupy, and preferred the more straightforward reading available on LibriVox.com. (But if you listen rather than read, you should seek out Pyle's amazing illustrations online.)
However you may read or listen to The Garden Behind the Moon, I recommend Pyle's ethereal and sensual, sad and joyful, sentimental and severe story.
Howard Pyle's The Garden Behind the Moon: A Real Story of the Moon-Angel (1895) is an allegorical fairy tale about death, life, love, imagination, and growing up. The narrator tells the "true" story of a boy called David who is mocked and ostracized by the other children in his village for being a "moon-calf" simpleton. With help from the village idiot, the cobbler Hans Krout, David walks the moon-path over the sea, "stretching from the moon to the earth, and from the earth to the moon, as bright as silver and gold, and as straight and smooth as a turnpike road." Then he encounters the House-in-the-moon (wherein much polishing of stars goes on), the Man-in-the-moon (a wise, pipe-smoking, silvery-wrinkle faced old man), the Moon-Angel (a sublime and scary being who likes to make old things new), and the Garden Behind the Moon (wherein happy—dead—children play free from care).
The story also involves a princess (whose birth was a gift from the Moon-Angel with a cost), a little old lady with a red petticoat (who washes people's dirty souls and hangs them out to dry like snow white sheets on a line), a Black Horse with white wings (from "those lofty altitudes of the still blue heavens where he forever circles, dips, hovers in airy and ambient brightness"), and an impossible quest to attempt to steal the Wonder-box and Know-All Book from the Iron Man in his Iron Castle and to bring them back to "the brown earth" where they belong.
The story features much wisdom, often of a paradoxical nature: it's better to see things from the inside than from the outside; it's necessary to feel the greatest sorrow to be able to experience the greatest joy; "sometimes there is more solid truth in a little nonsense than in a whole peck of potatoes"; and in matters of the fantastic, the harder you try to achieve something the more you fail, the more you try to remember something the more you forget it, and the more you try to tell something the more your speech disintegrates.
Pyle reveals an appealing humility, valuing the manual and humble labor of shoe making more than his own writing and illustrating: "to this day I believe it takes more wits to cobble a pair of shoes than to write a big book, and more cleverness to make a good wax-end than to draw a picture with a lead-pencil."
Furthermore, despite glorifying the white male hero, Pyle's book has interesting things to say about gender (e.g., Eve and Adam are very different than Adam and Eve) and race (e.g., "For there is as much joy and gladness over one poor black woman who enters into that place as there is over the whitest empress who ever walked the earth of Christendom").
Pyle writes much sublime description, like this:
"The Black Horse gave a great neigh like the peal of a trumpet. Clashing his hoofs upon the rocks, he spread his wonderful white wings, and, leaping into the air, flew clapping and thundering away—away—away—now circling and soaring in upward spiral flight, until he became a spot upon the sky—twinkled—was lost—was there was gone."
He also writes some scary description, like this:
"Then he [the Iron Man] sat down to the table and began to eat and drink, carving the meat with the iron knife as long as a scythe, and thrusting it into his mouth with the fork as large as a pitch fork, and drinking great draughts of ale out of the huge goblet. The ale hissed and sputtered as it went down his iron throat, and a white cloud of steam came out of his nostrils. "
Although the story looks forward to adult love ("When we grow up we shall be married"), Pyle wrote it after the death of his young son, and it is quite moving to imagine him trying to come to terms with his loss by writing this fantasy ("the more sad the outside, the more beautiful almost always is the inside") and to get the reader to begin imagining his or her own death: "You yourself will see how it is some day, for everybody looks out of a moon window sooner or later, and this is not all nonsense either."
Anyone who likes Pyle's more famous and accessible books should give this one a try to round out their understanding of the great author and illustrator. As Perry Nodelman said about The Garden Behind the Moon, it "seems to be as dreamy, as vague, and as mystical as Men of Iron and The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood are plain and practical—as 'sweet and thin and clear' as the other books are loud and boisterous." And anyone who likes allegorical fairy tales like At the Back of the North Wind or Water-Babies should try this one.
Although there is a version sold on audible.com, I found the reader's voice in the sample too syrupy, and preferred the more straightforward reading available on LibriVox.com. (But if you listen rather than read, you should seek out Pyle's amazing illustrations online.)
However you may read or listen to The Garden Behind the Moon, I recommend Pyle's ethereal and sensual, sad and joyful, sentimental and severe story.
June 2, 2015
Originally published in 1895, The Garden Behind the Moon is, like The Water Babies and At the Back of the North Wind a Victorian children's story with a curiously death-oriented plot. The Garden Behind the Moon is a beautiful place inhabited by the souls of dead children, though the two main characters, a princess and a fisherman's son, are actually in a catatonic state while their minds visit the realm of the Moon Angel, a beautiful and frightening entity who may be the angel of death or perhaps a more benevolent version of Satan himself.
Darkly sentimental and deliciously creepy, Pyle's short novel is a little like At the Back of the North Wind with less preachiness and more dragon-slaying, a bit like Nathaniel Hawthorne's retellings of the Greek myths only without the syrupiness. An unjustly forgotten delight I would highly recommend for fans of Victorian children's fiction.
Darkly sentimental and deliciously creepy, Pyle's short novel is a little like At the Back of the North Wind with less preachiness and more dragon-slaying, a bit like Nathaniel Hawthorne's retellings of the Greek myths only without the syrupiness. An unjustly forgotten delight I would highly recommend for fans of Victorian children's fiction.
October 7, 2019
A lovely little story of a boy who grows into a man through the ice and fire of experience, kills the iron man, rescues Phyllis, brings the Wonder Box and the Know All Book to the brown earth, and takes Phyllis- the Princess Auralia of Earth- as his wife. This dear fairytale was written by Howard Pyle in the memory of his little boy in Heaven.
September 22, 2016
I got this book at the Delaware Art Museum, inspired by having seen the collections of illustrators. I had been only dimly aware that Howard Pyle wrote as well as illustrated books, so chose this out of curiosity. The title reminded me of some of the old fairy stories that my mother and her mother had read; indeed, this book was published at a time when my grandmother may indeed have read it as a child (1895). The story is a rather static narrative, easy to put down and forget what you've read so far. The leisurely pace is sprinkled with commentary like "you wouldn't understand this, but you might some day...or maybe not" (gist, not actual quotes). The premise is a pretty one: think of the image of a full moon shining on water...think of the path you see leading to it. Now imagine that you could walk on this shimmering path to the moon. The story centers on David, a boy who does just that. The somewhat surrealistic story has elements of Jack and the Beanstalk, Cinderella, David and Goliath, Pegasus, and some Biblical elements, specifically the Garden of Eden. The person who has been mocked and thought crazy later becomes the heroic ruler, and the story yields a very simple message about the meaning of happiness.
May 31, 2015
This is a fun old story. It's a fairy tale with a sweet melody that can really grow in your mind.
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February 1, 2025:0)
December 19, 2025
The Garden Behind the Moon is a dreamy allegorical story that draws upon well-known fairytales. While it may go over the head of a younger child, there's a biting darkness as you realise the symbols of death, and the loss of his child likely inspired this story. I really enjoyed the dreaminess combined with the underlying bittersweetness, and the weaving in of well-known stories reminded me a little of Diana Wynne Jones. Overall, the closest thing I could compare it to is George MacDonald's works. Sadly, the second half felt weaker and leaning too heavily on biblical metaphor.
September 4, 2018
I had heard good reviews about this book, but I didn't like it. It's a children's fairytale written in the late 1800's. The storyline didn't always make sense. And I didn't like the repetitive sentences that happen consistently throughout the book.
November 21, 2018
Beautiful tale about the struggle and growth that come with love and marriage
A wonderful fairy tale of false assumptions, redemption, and innocence. Reminds of why everyone has value and could ultimately be the hero that saves man kind.
A wonderful fairy tale of false assumptions, redemption, and innocence. Reminds of why everyone has value and could ultimately be the hero that saves man kind.
July 31, 2023
A great fairy story, a tale of wonder, coming of age, and a quest for love. A voyage into a dreamy landscape that glitters under the moonlight. On many aspects, a foreshadowing of Tolkien's Roverandom and poems about the Man-in-the-moon.
December 12, 2018
A sweet children's fairy tale. Some of the themes are relevant today
March 1, 2023
What a strange, wonderful book. Besides some downright bewildering moments, this is a delightful story that tells kids it is okay to exist simply and okay to view the world with wonder.
May 31, 2010
I’m sort of torn between giving this book a 2 or 3 star rating. The story itself is nothing really new; it read like a retelling of various Bible tales including the story of David and Goliath. Pyle’s story centers around a boy named David who finds a path to the moon. He meets the Moon-Angel who sends David on a quest to find the Wonder Box and the Know All Book and return them back to earth.
I did like Pyle’s illustrations. The figures themselves are rather rustic, but the backgrounds are great; they almost look like photographs. Because of them, I'm giving the book 3 stars.
I did like Pyle’s illustrations. The figures themselves are rather rustic, but the backgrounds are great; they almost look like photographs. Because of them, I'm giving the book 3 stars.
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November 8, 2014I picked it up for the illustrations expecting a cute children's fairytale book about gardens on moon to read to my little cousin but...that's not what it is. Howard Pyle wrote this after the death of his son and it shows. It's a blend of several fairytales and biblical themes and reminded me of George MacDonald a bit -- except MacDonald is better. This did have its moments, though. I think I also spotted some Tolkien inspiration -- I wonder if he based his idea of Olórë Mallë on this or if the similarities are just a coincidence.
August 24, 2012
Excellent read aloud for kids. Closer to 4 stars. I realized as I read this that parts of this story were included in other fairy tales I read growing up. But I would say that this is the "original" since this author was very popular for kids well over a hundred yrs ago. Look forward to finding more by this author for my younger ones.
April 2, 2014
I recognized several different stories in this novella: Jack and the Beanstalk, Adam and Eve, Cinderella (with reversed roles),Pegasus, Pandora's Box. I found the first part of the book slow and maybe repetitious, but the second half picked up. It's meant to be a children's book, but I don't know if I'd read it to children.
February 8, 2013
Though the idea of the story includes fantasy and childhood innocence, the writing style is difficult to follow and adds a heaviness to the reading that I didn't enjoy. I especially loathed the ending of this book leaving me disappointed and wanting to write my own ending.
January 2, 2025
Howard Pyle is so consistent, genuine, inventive, kind. His writing so musical, as if coming from a beautiful soul in constant wonder. The Audiobook is wonderful, the story beautiful, a fantasy world and our world, sometimes dark, sometimes truly happy, such imagery to enjoy at any age.
August 5, 2011
The story had classical elements such as different helpers along the way and the Pegasus of clasical mythology
September 9, 2011
This is the only book I've ever read that was so horrible I had to quit reading it. I really do not like this book.
February 27, 2024
This was one of my favorite books while growing up. The last time I read it I was ten but I plan on re-reading within the next couple of weeks!
May 23, 2014
Good middle grade book. Quick read and very interesting!
May 9, 2020
I read this book a while ago, but I don’t remember anything about it except I really enjoyed it.
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December 8, 2021Re-read: late 80’s ?
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews