Through helping them, Jack finds the warmth he’s been yearning for, and realizes bringing joy to others can melt his own chill. To keep the cold in his heart from taking over, he spreads it to the landscapes around him and earns a new name: Jack Overland Frost.īut a true friend always comes through, and on one particularly bleak night, MiM shines down and shows Jack a group of children in great peril. And while Nightlight has fun sailing icy winds and surfing clouds, he is also lonely without his friend MiM. But when Pitch destroys MiM’s world, he nearly destroys Nightlight too, sending him plunging to Earth where, like Peter Pan, he is destined to remain forever a boy, frozen in time. Joyce combines elemental fairyland themes-a cloistered heir, secret powers, mysterious good deeds-into a tale that's warm and fuzzy, swashbuckling, and dazzlingly inventive all at the same time.Discover how Jack Frost keeps the hearts of children happy in the third picture book in Academy Award winner William Joyce’s New York Times bestselling and “dazzlingly inventive” ( Publishers Weekly) The Guardians of Childhood series.īefore Jack Frost was Jack Frost, he was Nightlight, the most trusted and valiant companion of MiM, the Man in the Moon.

Learning of the hopes and dreams of Earth's children, he gathers a team of fellow guardians to protect and console them. The infant Man in the Moon (named for the Moon Clipper, an extraterrestrial airship that disguises itself as a moon at night) is hidden away by his parents in order to escape the nefarious Pitch, 'the King of Nightmares,' renowned for 'plundering planets, extinguishing stars, and scuttling every airship that crossed his path.' Without his parents, but amply provided for, the acronymically nicknamed MiM grows up, round-faced and nattily dressed, orbiting Earth in the derelict clipper ('It was now just a moon'). His sumptuous spreads are crowded with rotund telescopes, Jules Verne rocket ships, and sherbet-bearing robots, all painted in a superb palette of indigo and gold.

* 'Joyce's (A Day with Wilbur Robinson) concoction, the inaugural offering in the Guardians of Childhood series (with films and 12 books to follow), is a rich, cinematic brew of steampunk fancies.

The guardians by william joyce