The nature of the plot demands we get both character’s perspective. Though the story takes place during the hours of just one night, we learn so much about Lucy and Ed’s past with each other and also about their families that wouldn’t have felt organic without the close, present first person perspective. Anyone who knows my reading taste knows that I am highly suspicious of any novel written in alternating first person and think most people should probably not go sprinkling poems into their novels (I also am personally not a fan of novels in verse). The story of their night is told between mostly by alternating Lucy and Ed’s first person point of view, but there are also poems by Ed’s friend, Poet, who sometimes writes verse alongside Shadow’s murals. But Ed says he knows Shadow, and takes her on a tour of his secret haunts in the hopes of finding him during the course of the night. Lucy wants to meet the enigmatic Shadow who paints beautiful graffiti murals all around town, not hang out with Ed, the guy from her art class who dropped out of school after she gave him a broken nose on their first date. They’re out for a night on the town, and all want something to happen, to get something that they want.

Graffiti Moon is the story of Lucy and two of her friends on the night of their high school graduation.

I’ve never really read anything less than a rave review of this novel, so I had high expectations going in, and still, Cath Crowley managed to blow me away with her hanging moon and shooting flames and skies that go nowhere. We have similar taste we both like books that inspire that ache in your soul. This book was recommended to me first by one of the teens in the book club I organize at the library. He takes Lucy on an all-night search to places where Shadow’s thoughts about heartbreak and escape echo around the city walls.īut the one thing Lucy can’t see is the one thing that’s right before her eyes. His work is all over the city, but he is nowhere.Įd, the last guy she wants to see at the moment, says he knows where to find him. Lucy’s looking for Shadow, the graffiti artist everyone talks about. Paints guys with grass growing from their hearts and girls with buzzing lawn mowers.” Paints birds trapped on brick walls and people lost in ghost forests.

Published: Published February 14th 2012 by Knopf Books for Young Readers (first published in Australia, 2010)

Graffiti moon