A while back I had my head served to me on a platter for voicing distaste on a parenting message board for the book “Love you Forever” by Robert Munsch (who I otherwise adore). During this debate, I learned that there are some people who also can’t stand Margaret Wise Brown’s “Goodnight Moon”. Despite its reputation as the ultimate in perfect children’s books, I had never read it and so don’t really remember much about what they disliked.
My daughter recently received it as a gift, and I don’t get the passion people feel either way. It seems sort of bland and innocuous to me, and I don’t see why it would be overly hated or overly loved.
So please share your personal thoughts on “Goodnight Moon” – best book ever? Or creepy/boring/outdated/what-have-you?
I don’t have any strong opinions on it but I’ve used it in beginning adult ESL classes. Good repetition and it’s so easy to read, it gives the students a sense of accomplishment.
Each of my kids went through a Goodnight Moon phase. It’s fun to read out loud, easy for them to remember and say along with you. I liked it.
Trivia question - the book can be divided in 2 parts - the first describes the room and the objects in it. The second says goodnight to the objects and other stuff. What is the only object mentioned in the first part that the second part does not say goodnight to?
Boring. Poor plot development and I didn’t feel any empathy for the characters. I liked trying to find the mouse on each page, but that got old fairly quick.
Why? Why, I asked myself, was the old lady sitting in the dark room, knitting? Totally threw me out of the story…
I’m sort of “meh” toward it. It’s okay, but I don’t get the hype. My son (4) looooooves it. It’s one of his most requested bedtime books and he really takes his time looking at the pictures. It’s very calming for him.
I think Good Night Moon is like Barney. There’s something about it that really speaks to kids (the repetition maybe?), but adults go “what the heck . . .?” But my BIL refers to Love You Forever as “the stalker book.”
Goodnight Moon is fine. It wasn’t one of my childhood standards – I’m not sure I read it before my daughter arrived – so I don’t have much sentimental attachment to it. There are some books I enjoy reading to her over and over, there are some that I have to grit my mental teeth to get through again, but GM falls squarely in the middle.
Going from memory: the comb and the brush. Right? No, that must be wrong; you seem pretty sure of “only”. And, hmm, “Goodnight, comb. Goodnight, brush, Goodnight nobody. Goodnight, mush…” just popped into my head. OK, I’ll have to think more on that one. Not gonna grab the book! Maybe “cow jumping over the moon”? Ah! kittens? no. Mittens? No.
It’s a great last-one-before-going-to-sleep book. The room gets darker, darker. The rocking chaired knitting rabbit – well, she’s just knitting while she oversees the go-to-sleepage, maybe just saying “hush”, occasionally… or, “stop kicking your brother”… nothing creepy there.
If you casually drag your finger over what you’re reading, kids get the idea that those symbols mean something special. My grandson would insist on the opening pages being read, even. And one night, he fell asleep mumbling, “pictures by Clement Hurd… pictures by Clement Hurd… pictures by Clemmmmmmmennnn”, which was cool.
Runaway Bunny is also by Margaret Wise Brown, and kids will discover that the drawings are similar, and ask you to find the other book so they can compare. I suggest you let that happen, rather than point it out to them. Don’t read the two books in a row. (Which works out, anyway, as Moon is for a younger age than Runaway.) Much cooler when they figure out stuff themselves.
I have 8 kids. I can darned near read it without looking. I always read “and a bowl full of oatmeal” so the kids can correct me. They love it (correcting me–I suspect they’re mostly tired of the book by now).
I love it, too. It’s very soothing, and above all, very short! But God, did Margaret Wise Brown write a lot of crap. Goodnight Moon is just about the only good thing she over wrote.
My vote for kids’ book that everyone loves but I hate? Eloise.
Oh, don’t get me started on her. Freakin’ six-year-old Katharine Hepburn wannabe. (That’s what her intonations remind me of- “Oh, I rawther adore this!”) Kids don’t talk like that. Sometimes you can get humor out of kids talking like adults. Charles Schulz did. Kay Thompson didn’t.
As for Goodnight Moon, I have no qualms with it. I’m still debating whether it was right for HarperCollins to remove Clement’s cigarette, though.
I just scanned “Goodnight Moon” on amazon.com. I was expecting more, somehow. I had the idea that the illustrations would be deep and intense, like a Maurice Sendak book. Maybe I’m thinking of Stellaluna.
Actually, she rocks him while he’s already asleep. And yes it’s creepy. But all the same, when the son rocks his dying mother, then goes home and rocks his own baby…Well, I dinna cry when I saw me own father hung for stealin’ a pig, but I’ll cry now.
I wasn’t a huge fan as a kid, and now I say meh. I have friends who adore the thing, though. When I was at that age I couldn’t get enough Marvin K. Mooney Will You Please Go Now, and it had to be my dad who read it to me. (“Can’t we read another book tonight, honey?” “Marvin!”)
For my money, the coolest picture books are George and Martha.
I don’t recall having read this book until I was an adult, so I guess I miss out on the “magic” of it. I like Tell Me Something Happy Before I Go to Sleep by Joyce Dunbar better. Some little kids really seem to like Goodnight Moon, though, so I guess it’s okay.
At least there aren’t any terrible messages being sent to the wee folk in it, unlike The Giving Tree or The Rainbow Fish. I won’t read either of them to kids.
I just made that up.) is it put me to sleep but not my kid!