Blue Peter Book Club: Guardians of the New Moon accessible version
Read a suitable for screen readers sample of Guardians of the New Moon, written by Eric Huang and illustrated by Phùng Nguyên Quang.
Sample of Guardians of the New Moon
Chapter 1.
The Jade Emperor was bored.
The King of Heaven had just finished his favourite breakfast – the same mushroom dumplings he ate for breakfast every morning, followed by hot pu’er tea served in the jade cup gifted to him by the goddess of tea, Tie Kuan Yin. He sighed. There wasn’t much to do these days, not since he had completed the really big project of making the Earth.
The Jade Emperor hadn’t done everything himself, of course. Pangu, the hairy horned giant, had done the hardest work. He had divided the murky Yin from the clear Yang to separate the Earth from the Sky. The snake-bodied Nüwa had taken over from there. She had fashioned four pillars to hold the Sky above the Earth, keeping the two separate, so the Jade Emperor could fill the surface of the new planet with life.
He had started in the Ocean, conjuring all sorts of squishy and shelly things. Then he invented fish, which swam forth to fill the water. A small handful had fleshy fins and stepped cautiously on to the land. Soon, creatures of every imaginable form were roaming the planet. There were ancient animals like dinosaurs and sabre-toothed cats, magical creatures including phoenixes and unicorns. Geckos, bugs, frogs, bats, elephants, owls, elk, cheetahs, wombats…
The Jade Emperor made them all. He wrapped them in a blanket of green forests, blue ice and golden deserts that the giant Pangu folded into mountains and canyons. Then, taking brown clay from the Earth, the Jade Emperor made the first human. Earth was now complete, full of life. The Jade Emperor was proud of the planet he and his friends had created. Of course, there had been a handful of mishaps. The two-headed ostrich ran in circles because each head wanted to go in a different direction – they had to be separated into two one-headed ostriches. And in the end, Nüwa had been right: the fish-out-of-water was much better in the water – perfect as just … a fish.
Now that Project Earth was finished and the mistakes had been fixed, there was nothing more for the Jade Emperor to do. So he sat on his throne in the Heavenly Palace. He ate his mushroom dumplings.
He sipped his pu’er tea. And he sighed. The Jade Emperor was bored. He gazed indifferently into a clear pool that magically revealed any location on Earth. A peek first into the deepest undersea canyons – a singing merman … glowing fish … sea monsters fighting over a sunken ship. The usual.
Then he peered into a jungle overflowing with life – same as it was every day. Finally he glanced at a great stretch of desert dotted with cacti baking beneath the sun – typical. An unexpected movement drew the emperor’s attention to a mediumsized temple in a small human village. The rooftop was shaped like a tent, the four corners ending in upturned curves mimicking the talons of a dragon. A cat! Cats weren’t as boring as other creatures.
No one could predict what a cat might do next – not even the Jade Emperor himself. This cat was black and white, the balanced Yin and Yang of equal and opposite colours. The cat’s tail twitched like a rattlesnake. His eyes were hawk-like, held steady on a hole just below a window. Suddenly, a well-fed rat darted out. The cat launched into a chase so fast it looked like a race.
