This wonderful sci-fi fairy tale will certainly feel familiar to anyone who saw one of the more recent Pixar shorts, La Luna (in fact the director freely credits Calvino with inspiring elements of the film).
It is funny, and wildly imaginative and, perhaps necessarily, told in a very prosaic, almost pedestrian way. You probably have to write in an almost documentary style when you are writing a story as fantastic as this: the premise being that, years and years ago, the moon was so close to the earth that you could climb up to it at certain times of the month.
It is a wonderful example of how to let your creativity fly free, and still end up with a story that talks about essential truths everyone can relate to.