I would say that this is the perfect chapter book for older readers.

The main character is Harry Moon who is a young magician. In his little town of Sleepy Hallow its residents are in a fight about the good and bad magic and Harry is caught in the middle of it all.

One day his friend Declan ask for his help in delivering his newspapers for a week but there is stiplulations that it has to be started at 4 am not a minute before or after and it must be done by 6am. Declan says one of the best things is seeing the morning before anyone does. Harry agrees and he quickly discovers more about his town and himself that he never knew before.

This is a fun and quick series to read

Thank you for the opportunity to read this book. Unfortunately, while I enjoyed the first book I read in the series I had some problems with the second book I read. I am unable to get into this one.

4 stars
Harry Moon, a you magician in the town of Sleepy Hollow agrees to take on the responsibility of his friend Declan’s paper route for a week while Declan goes to Disney World. Harry gets up early and starts deliveries at 4am. Declan shares with Harry that he will see some unusual things in Sleepy Hollow at that time of day.
On his first day, Harry sees his friend, Samson Dupree opening his magic shop before five o’clock. Harry also experiences what Delcan called, “first light”, when the day starts pushing out the night. As the week progresses, Harry meets more people and finds out the mystery of who and how the newspaper is created.
This story, unlike a previous Harry Moon book I have read, could be a little scary for younger readers.
Thank you NetGalley and publisher, Diamond Book Distributors, for the opportunity to read this ARC.

Harry Moon is asked by his friend to do his newspaper route for a week. He will bring Harry two T-shirt’sfor doing it. He tells Harry what to do on the newspaper route. He also mentions that Harry will get to see first light and how special it is.as Harry does the newspaper route, he sees Samson who is a magician and friend going into his store very early in the morning. Harry wonders where Samson was. When his rabbit friend appears, Harry asks the talking rabbit. The rabbit won’t tell him. Does the rabbit know? Will Harry find out where Samson goes?

The author does an excellent job of writing this novel. The illustrations add to the story. When I had finished reading this story, I found another story at the end. It too is delightful. You won’t want to miss it! As you read First Light, you see Harry learning what it means to be responsible.
This is a fun book to read but a small warning as there are a few creepy creatures in it.

A reading feast, and perfect for kids between the ages of 9-12!

"A light that peeks out from the sun before the sun truly rises"...first light...in a secret land...with a magic teacher....

This book, with a prologue and 12 chapters, starts out with simple yet deep introductions and backgrounds of it's featured characters. What I especially loved at first glance of it, was how well the author describes this story's settings....creating it's vibe and mood. Very fun and very magical ....at least from what I got to read of it...before it was taken away by my kids!

A book that looks easy to get lost in!!!

Highly recommended, especially if you're looking to give this beautiful hardcover book as a gift!

It's the last few weeks of summer vacation, and 13-year-old Harry Moon is looking forward to relaxing and enjoying the last of the days off before school starts up again. So when his friend Declan asks him for a favor--and it's a big favor--Harry hesitates. 

Declan wants Harry to take over hi newspaper route for a week while he goes to Florida with his dad. It didn't sound so bad, until Harry realized that he'd have to start work at 4 in the morning. 4 in the morning! How crazy is that? But when Harry thought about it, he realized that he did want to help his friend. And it was only for a week. He could get up early for a week, right? 

So when Monday morning rolled around, Harry did what Declan had told him to do. He got up and got some breakfast for himself and then set off on his bike to get to the back of the newspaper office at 4 exactly. Declan told Harry that he had two hours to get all the papers delivered and get the basket back to the newspaper office. Declan also told Harry that the town of Sleepy Hollow looked different that early in the morning, that he'd get to see first light, the magical time right before the sun comes up. 

As Harry spent the week getting up every morning and delivering the papers, bicycling through the town in the wee hours of the morning, he does learn things about his town that he'd never known. First light was beautiful and magical. The papers were rumored to be in invisible ink, but the truth Harry discovered is so much stranger. And why did Harry see his friend Samson Dupree, his personal magic mentor and the proprietor of the Sleepy Hollow Magic Shop going into his store around 5 every morning? Was he going somewhere, or coming from somewhere?

When Harry finally goes to Samson to ask his questions, he finds that the answers are far more transformative than he expected. But the understanding and the peace he finds makes it all worth it. And to say thank you, Declan brings him back two Star Wars t-shirts from Disneyland, so it really was a magical week. 

Harry Moon First Light is another in the charming Harry Moon series. Set in Sleepy Hollow, a town run by an evil mayor, Harry and his friends are trying to stand up for what's right and often find themselves fighting off bullies (mostly the mayors' sons and his henchmen). Harry is learning magic, with the help of Samson and a large rabbit who appears when Harry needs him to. Author Mark Andrew Poe has created a fun series with interesting characters, and that has strong spiritual overtones. The struggle of good vs. evil comes up often, and the references to The Great Magician have a strong religious overtone. Harry Light First Moon is an interesting take on middle grade magic fiction, and the series is worth checking out if your or your kids are fans of stories about magic. 



Galleys for Harry Moon First Light were provided by Diamond Book Distributors through NetGalley, with many thanks.

I’ve read many Harry Moon stories in the past couple of months, but I think this one is my favourite.

This story had a very creepy theme. Strange creatures, who are controlled by the mayor, ran the newspaper office in their town. They looked like something out of Doctor Who! It was creepy, but I liked the mystery of the creatures.

As in the other Harry Moon stories, there are teaching moments throughout the adventure. Harry learned discipline by taking over his friend’s paper route. And he ended up seeing what a beautiful town he lives in when first light happens in the morning.

This was a great middle grade story.

I had trouble getting into this series, but I am sure much younger readers would enjoy it. It seems very funny.

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This was one of three middle-grade novels I got from Net Galley all on the topic of Harry Moon (two of them) and his sister, Honey Moon. I know these are aimed at middle-grade and not at me, but I still can't rate this one positively even in that light because it did not tell a great story and it was so derivative as to be quite sickening. Do not confuse this series with The Dream Life Of Harry Moon: A Novel by Meg Stewart, or with Harry Moons fyra faser by Thomas Sullivan, or with The Last Breath: A Harry Moon Novel by David Graves, or with The Phases of Harry Moon by Thomas Sullivan! Harry Moon is quite a popular name for story tellers.

So the derivative parts? Well, to begin with, the boy wizard's name is Harry. He has an older magical mentor who fortunately wasn't called Albus, but who does carry a wand and wears rather eccentric clothes. Harry of course didn't know until this opening novel what magical powers he had. He lives in Sleepy Hollow, which is as over-used when it comes to paranormal events as Salem for witches. Nothing original there. Harry has a large talking rabbit for a friend, reminiscent of the 1950 movie Harvey. Finally there's a gang of boorish bullies and an evil villain, none of whom faces any consequences. There was nothing original here.

Just as in the movie Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas, in this story, the calendar, but not the clock is somehow stopped at Halloween for reasons which were never explained, yet life went on perfectly normally, so I didn't get what it meant to say it was stuck at Halloween, or how that was supposed to work, and why people didn't see anything amiss with that, or why no one complained! It was like the town was somehow not connected with the rest of the world which evidently never noticed that Sleepy Hollow was nearly always out of sync with the rest of the country when it came not only to the date, but also the weather. Yet All Hallow's E'en was never actually celebrated! The whole thing seemed ill-conceived to me, and it simply didn't work.

Of course Harry has to come into his power, but just like the original Harry the magic boy, this Harry never really did anything with it when he got it. He never went after the villain, and he never used it to improve anyone's life, so it seemed quite pointless that he even had this power. Nor did it make sense that his wizard mentor had utterly failed to fix anything during his tenure either. What's the point of having magic if you never use it? What's the point of being a boy wizard in a story if there is never any wizardry - indeed Harry is pretty much warned against using it.

It made no sense and was a dissatisfying and really pointless read, especially when the blurb built it up so the reader expected weird things to happen when Harry began his paper route, but nothing really ever did. There was this thread of goodness running through the story which superficially seems like a good thing - we don't want kids going off down paths of evil and brutality, but where this failed was that there was no justice in this world! That's entirely the wrong message to send to kids.

It made little sense anyway, adhering to this Biblical moral code because following it blindly made Harry and his friends into perennial victims who got punished painfully, even brutally at times, and no adult ever stepped up to the plate to put an end to it or even to help the kids out. That's also entirely the wrong message to send. Talking of which, the illustrations in the novel were of a very simplistic cartoon-like nature and drawn and colored by Christine Weidman. From those, it would seem that there are only white folks in Sleepy Hollow. No characters of color are mentioned in the text, so it appears that no Latinos or African- or Asian-Amnerican people live there. Maybe all the smart folk have already left this dumb town? The only beings depicted with darker skin are the evil ones - not the mayor and his minions, but the ones referred to as the Quiet Ones: some sort of red-eyed humanoid creature. This actually struck me as rather racist.

On a related topic, I have to register a complaint about the abuse of trees here, not in Harry Moon's world, but here in the real world. In the ebook version this doesn't matter, although longer ebooks still use more energy to transmit to recipients, but in a print book, this much white space on the page is criminal. No on wants to see a novel which is all crammed text all over the page, granted, but to have such wide margins and such spaced text means a lot more trees have to die to produce a run of such books than would have been the case had the margins and paragraph-spacing been realistically conservative.

For all these reasons, I cannot in good faith recommend this novel.

There are about 14 Harry Moon books already published and I had never heard of this series. It is a cross between adventure, magic, families, friends and some bad characters. The town has been taken over by the mayor and it is Halloween themed and there are some pretty nasty characters floating around. Harry is the main character in the story and he is a pretty decent guy. He finds out that he is going to be instrumental in what happens to the town in the future, but goes through a couple of scary encounters in this book. I wish I knew more about Harry and his mentor Samson as I think a lot of things have happened to make them who they are in past books. Harry's family is pretty important to him and his mother seems to have some knowledge about the future that Harry does not know about. In this story, he stands up for himself in a bullying situation and develops a lot of self-confidence. I am definitely intrigued about this series. Unfortunately, I can not speak to the illustrations as the copy I received was not finished and did not have the illustrations. It is a chapter book, that would be appropriate for children 10 and up. I could see some reluctant readers (especially boys) liking this series and wanting to read more. A good addition for a school or class library, but I would suggest getting the previous books as well.