User:Jjk2023/Goodnight Moon

Lead Section

This book is the second in Brown and Hurd's "classic series," which also includes The Runaway Bunny and My World.

Background

In 1935, Margaret Wise Brown enrolled at the Bank Street Experimental School in New York, NY. At Bank Street, Brown studied childhood development alongside the school’s founder, Lucy Sprague Mitchell, who believed that children preferred stories about everyday topics rather than fantasies. Mitchell’s ideas combined with Brown’s observance of what children enjoyed formed the foundation for Brown’s writing going forward, including the familiar world depicted in Goodnight Moon.

In 1945, the idea for Goodnight Moon appeared to Margaret Wise Brown in a dream. She wrote down the story in the morning, with the original title of the book being Goodnight Room. Brown gave illustrator Clement Hurd very little direction on the illustrations, and the characters in Goodnight Moon are depicted as rabbits because Hurd was better at drawing rabbits than humans. This was among several decisions made regarding the illustrations over the course of the book’s creation. Other revisions include replacing a framed map on the wall with a scene from The Runaway Bunny and blurring the udder of the “cow that jumped over the moon.”

Publication history

Illustrator Clement Hurd said in 1983 that initially the book was to be published using the pseudonym "Memory Ambrose" for Brown, with his illustrations credited to "Hurricane Jones."

Goodnight Moon had poor initial sales: only 6,000 copies were sold upon initial release in the fall of 1947.

Anne Carroll Moore, the influential children's librarian at the New York Public Library (NYPL), regarded it as "overly sentimental."

Annual sales grew from about 1,500 copies in 1953 to almost 20,000 in 1970; by 1990, the total number of copies sold exceeded four million.

As of 2007, the book sells about 800,000 copies annually, and by 2017 had cumulatively sold an estimated 48 million copies.

In 1952, at the age of 42, Margaret Wise Brown died following a routine operation, and did not live to see the success of her book. Brown bequeathed the royalties to the book (among many others) to Albert Clarke, who was the nine-year-old son of a neighbor when Brown died.

In 2005, publisher HarperCollins digitally altered the photograph of illustrator Hurd, which had been on the book for at least twenty years, to remove a cigarette.

HarperCollins’ editor-in-chief for children's books, Kate Jackson, said, "It is potentially a harmful message to very young [children]."

HarperCollins had the reluctant permission of Hurd's son, Thacher Hurd, but the younger Hurd said the photo of Hurd with his arm and fingers extended, holding nothing, "looks slightly absurd to me."

Other Additions

In addition to several octavo and duodecimo paperback editions, Goodnight Moon is available as a board book and in "jumbo" edition designed for use with large groups.

• 1991, US, HarperFestival ISBN 0-694-00361-1, publication date September 30, 1991, board book.
• 1997, US, HarperCollins ISBN 0-06-027504-9, publication date February 28, 1997, Hardback 50th anniversary edition.
• 2007, US, HarperCollins ISBN 0-694-00361-1, publication date January 23, 2007, Board book 60th anniversary edition.

In 2008, Thacher Hurd used his father's artwork from Goodnight Moon to produce Goodnight Moon 123: A Counting Book. In 2010, HarperCollins used artwork from the book to produce Goodnight Moon's ABC: An Alphabet Book.

In 2015, Loud Crow Interactive Inc. released a Goodnight Moon interactive app.

Allusions and references

For example, the room of Goodnight Moon generally resembles the next-to-last spread of The Runaway Bunny, where the little bunny becomes a little boy and runs into a house, and the mother bunny becomes the little boy's mother; shared details include the fireplace and the painting by the fireplace of "The Cow Jumping Over the Moon," though other details differ (the colors of the walls and floor are switched, for instance).

The painting is itself a reference to the nursery rhyme "Hey Diddle Diddle," where a cow jumps over the moon.

The painting of three bears, sitting in chairs, alludes to "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" (originally "The Story of the Three Bears"), which also contains a copy of the cow jumping over the moon painting.

Literary significance and reception

In a 2007 online poll, the National Education Association listed the book as one of its "Teachers' Top 100 Books for Children."

From the time of its publication in 1947 until 1972, the book was "banned" by the New York Public Library due to the then-head children's librarian Anne Carroll Moore's hatred of the book.

Goodnight Moon, Bernstein argues, is both a bedtime book and a going-to-bed book.

According to The Daily News (Halifax) writer Cathy MacDonald, when Goodnight Moon was first published, it was considered controversial. This was because Goodnight Moon did not teach children anything, and Goodnight Moon did not “take” children anywhere, as the entire story takes place in only one room.

New Yorker writer Rosemary C. Benet called Goodnight Moon a "hypnotic bedtime litany."

Regarding Goodnight Moon, The Christian Science Monitor wrote that “a book for little children which creates an atmosphere of peace and calm is something for which to be thankful.”

Analysis

In his article Bedtime Books, the Bedtime Story Ritual, and Goodnight Moon, Daniel Pereira analyzes the function of Goodnight Moon as a “bedtime book” that is not only beneficial to children at bedtime, but is beneficial to parents as well. Pereira first defines a “bedtime book” as a book that both “represents” bedtime and is about bedtime, and is meant to be read by a parent and child together. Pereira further argues that bedtime books such as Goodnight Moon serve parental interests since they help parents carry out their duty of being an “entertainer, educator, enchanter” at bedtime while also maintaining a sense of independence between the child and the parent. Pereira analyzes the effectiveness of Goodnight Moon’s illustrations in assisting parents at bedtime through discussing Joseph Stanton’s evaluation of the role of the “old lady,” who is treated as another “feature of the landscape” rather than as a character herself. Stanton notes that the objectification of the old lady contributes to a sense of independence in the child, who lacks a true parental figure in the “great green room." Pereira asserts that despite this objectification, the old lady still conveys a message when she whispers “hush." He notes that in doing so, the old lady “delivers the parent’s bedtime message for them,” which reminds the child reader to be quiet.

In the article 'Goodnight Nobody': Comfort and the Vast Dark in the Picture-Poems of Margaret Wise Brown and Her Collaborators, author Joseph Stanton discusses a motif present in Goodnight Moon that he refers to as “child-alone-in-the-wide-world.” According to Stanton, this motif is present in much of Brown’s work and is characterized by a child character finding resolution in being left alone. Further contributing to this motif, Stanton argues that the child is at the center of both the words and the illustrations in Goodnight Moon due to a lack of any parental figure. He states that the voice in Goodnight Moon is not the child’s voice, but rather an omniscient voice that knows and understands what the child sees. Additionally, Stanton comments that each illustration focuses on what the child is looking at, which corresponds to what is being named in each scene.

In his article 'Goodnight Moon' was once banned: Classic children's book marks 75th anniversary, Jim Beckerman presents analysis about why children enjoy Goodnight Moon. Beckerman references professor Julie Rosenthal’s point that Goodnight Moon acts as a “scavenger hunt” for children, as they are able to search the illustrations for each object mentioned in the book. Beckerman also mentions some of professor April Patrick’s ideas, such as how the rhyming scheme fascinates children, as well as how children feel comfort in reading a book about real things.

Musical adaptation

In 2012, American composer Eric Whitacre obtained the copyright holder's permission to set the words to music. He did so initially for a soprano, specifically his then wife Hila Plitmann, with harp and string orchestra.

Exhibit Adaptation

In 2006, an exhibit titled “From Goodnight Moon to Art Dog: The World of Clement, Edith and Thacher Hurd'' was on display at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island. This exhibit featured 3-D displays of Clement Hurd’s artwork, as well as artwork from his wife, Edith Hurd, and his son, Thacher Hurd. Included in the displays was the “great green room” scene from Goodnight Moon. Providence was the exhibit’s final stop in the United States. The exhibit had also featured shows in Vermont, Michigan, Florida and South Carolina.

In popular culture

The first episode of the Warner Bros. animated television series Animaniacs included a spoof of Goodnight Moon named "Nighty-Night Toon."

The January 13, 2002 edition of the comic strip Zits featured Jeremy Duncan, the main character, reciting a parody of Goodnight Moon; his room and curtains resembled those in the book.

Mad magazine published a parody of the book starring Batman, titled "Goodnight, Batcave."

Catherynne M. Valente's 2021 novella The Past Is Red includes a character named Goodnight Moon.

Survivors of an extraterrestrial organism's killings in 2017 science-fiction film Life read excerpts from Goodnight Moon.

In the TV series Mad Men (Season 5, Episode 11), Pete Campbell reads Goodnight Moon to his daughter.

The January 29, 2023 edition of the comic strip FoxTrot features Jason Fox reciting his own version of Goodnight Moon while shutting down the family desktop computer.