Nathan W. Pyle’s 2025 picture book Tuck Me In! is somewhat original and somewhat successful.
The book personifies the Moon and its effect on the tides by presenting a situation in which a beach is cold, and the Moon tries to keep it warm by covering it with a blanket of water (the tide). This works, but gathering water to cover one beach pulls it away from another, leaving it exposed. The Moon tries to adjust, moving the ocean to and fro to cover first one beach, then the other. This makes both beaches unhappy, and starts a squabble.
The Moon asks the beaches to take turns, but squabbling ensues. This leads to a more creative situation and possible solution, where one beach builds a sandcastle while the other gets “tucked in” with a water blanket.
This works…until all the other beaches on Earth ask for their turn. The Moon is overwhelmed at first, but eventually sets up a system where every beach gets a turn titled T.I.D.E., for “Tuck-Ins Distributed Evenly.”
After the story, the author shares a couple of pages of explanation of how tides works, sketching in the science behind them.
I saw this is somewhat original and somewhat successful because many books have brought the moon to life, but few have personified moon, beach, and their relationship. The tide as blanket is somewhat new, as is the idea that the tides had to be invented…but that’s only somewhat successful. The tides predate people, and if they weren’t happening before this story, what the heck was happening in the oceans? How was the gravity invoked in the last pages not working?
