Harry Moon

Book: The Enchanted World of Honey Moon – Mountain Mayhem, The Amazing Adventures of Harry Moon – Inkadink, The Amazing Adventures of Harry Moon – Haunted Pizza, created by Mark Andrew Poe, Rabbit Publishers, 2016

Genre: Fantasy, Adventure

Target Audience: Boys and Girls 10-16

Subjects: Good vs. Evil, Greed, Hate, Pride, Friendship, Truth

Honey doubted that Trout had planned a challenge for them.  She’d probably forgotten about them altogether. In that case, it was up to Honey to take charge.

Summary of Mountain Mayhem: Honey is bound and determined to get her last scout badge! Last year the wilderness camp out and hike ended in a disaster with the girls giving up and going home. The main scout leader later took out most of the girls for another try, all except for Honey and her two friends. Now the assistant leader who Honey seems as completely incapable is supposed to lead the three girls through the wilderness to complete the badge. Honey is confident – confident that the only way they will get out is if she takes charge!

 

You know, disappearing ink has been used to print Sleepy Hollow’s newspaper. The news gets reported but then, over time, it disappears. No evidence. No story. It must be connected. But how?

Summary of Inkadink: As Harry digs through his backpack trying to find his phone, he finds a note instead – a note of magazine letters cut and pasted to give him a message that makes no sense. It has something to do with ink. So Harry, with the help of his sister, set out to discover who sent the note and what it has to do with the Mayor and the town newspaper – which is written in disappearing ink. The mayor plans to take action soon so Harry has to act fast if he wants to stop the mayor’s latest evil plot.

He was going to have to go to school and confront his friends – to tell them they needed to stop eating pizza from The Sleepy Hollow Slice because there was an ingredient called hateweed in it that was turning them into angry lunatics. It even sounded crazy to Harry.

Summary of Haunted Pizza: Ooey, gooey, cheesey… evil? Isn’t pizza supposed to be Ooey, gooey, cheesey goodness? Not pizza made with HateWeed – the secret ingredient the mayor is harvesting out at Folly Farm and putting into the new addicting pizza that Sleep Hollow can’t get enough of. Thankfully, it doesn’t fill Harry with hate, just gives him enough of a stomach ache to know to avoid it. So when the whole town starts filling with hate and greed to get more, it’s up to Harry, and one person who just so happens to be on a gluten free diet, to stop the HateWeed Pizza from taking over the entire world!

Notes: Each of these books are part of the Harry Moon series. There is the Adventures of Harry Moon series and The Enchanted World of Honey Moon series. The Harry Moon series has been a subject of dialogue in Christian ministry circles since it first came out. It has been marketed to Christian ministries and recommended by some of them. But others have read the series or read what the creators had to say about the series and wondered what the hype was all about. The creators do not claim to be writing an explicitly Christian series. As I read through them I concluded that they very much imitate Christian writings. They contain some phrases that are Bible verses and have morals that are Biblically correct. There are mentions of things like church, prayer or an ultimate being (referred to as “The Great Magician). There is a character, an invisible rabbit, who seems to sort of represent the Holy Spirit. Some Christians might oppose them because of the focus on magic. But that’s a concept used in many Christian fantasy books that mostly just represents the power of God working through humans, doing things that can’t be done or explained without a supernatural power. My conclusion is that the books simply lack power. They are morally good, but without those morals being clearly based on a set standard – the Bible or something that represents the Bible, it lacks power. In our culture, there is a big push to have right and wrong be left up to the individual and to have evil be redefined. So Harry choosing to “do no evil” doesn’t mean anything. Who determines what is evil and what is not?

Another interesting note is that the books never claim to have an “author”, only a “creator”. After reading Inkadink and Haunted Pizza I found that the characters were different. Honey showed an adoration and extreme respect (mixed with a bit of viewing herself as knowing more than him) for her brother in Inkadink. In Haunted Pizza and Mountain Mayhem, Honey barely tolerates him. He’s annoying to her. She also barely tolerates her parents, her friends or her scout leader. She has a disrespectful attitude towards everyone, allowing her pride to let her believe everyone else is inferior. In Inkadink the mom wrestles with letting Harry and Honey do what they need to do, but is fully aware of them leaving the house late at night to go fight evil. She knows they have a calling and as much as she wants to protect them, she willingly lets them go. In Haunted Pizza, she has no idea Harry sneaks out and Harry fears getting in trouble for doing so. And when he confesses, he does get a punishment – they are proud of him, but still punish him. In Inkadink Rabbit does nothing more than offer support. He just tells Harry that he has his back a lot. In Haunted Pizza he complains about anchovies and gives Harry key advice. Also the way they characters are shown in the drawings and described in the books varied greatly from how they were drawn in Inkadink.

Overall, I’d say these books have some good things to offer. They aren’t as powerful as they could be, but they do have some good elements. They do teach Scriptural concepts and portray the importance of standing up against that which is evil.

Spiritual Content Recommendation Scale: 3.5/5

Reviewer: J:-)mi

John 8:32 – Then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.

1 Thessalonians 5:19-24 – Do not quench the Spirit. Do not treat prophecies with contempt but test them all; hold on to what is good, reject every kind of evil. May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.

Thank you to the publishers for sending me free review copies in exchange for my honest opinion. I appreciate it! All opinions are my own.