Goodnight Moon

This article is about the children's book. For other uses of "Goodnight Moon", see Goodnight Moon (disambiguation).

Goodnight Moon
Author(s)	Margaret Wise Brown
Illustrator	Clement Hurd
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Children's literature
Publisher	HarperCollins
Publication date	1947
Media type	Print
Pages	32
ISBN	0064430170
OCLC Number	299277
Dewey Decimal	[E] 21
LC Classification	PZ7.B8163 Go 1997
Followed by	My World

Goodnight Moon is an American children's book written by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Clement Hurd. It was first published in 1947, and is a highly acclaimed example of a bedtime story. It is about a child saying goodnight to everything around: "Goodnight room. Goodnight moon. Goodnight cow jumping over the moon. Goodnight light, and the red balloon..."

Plot summary

Goodnight Moon is classic children's literature in North America. The text is a poem, written in simple masculine rhyme, describing a bunny's bedtime ritual of saying "goodnight" to various objects in the bunny's bedroom: the red balloon, the bunny's dollhouse, the kittens, etc.

One aspect of this book is the wealth of detail in the illustrations. Although the entire story takes place in a single room, the careful reader or child will notice numerous details from page to page, including:

• the hands on the two clocks progress from 7 PM to 8:10 PM.
• the young mouse and kittens wander around the room. The mouse is present in all pages showing the room.
• the red balloon hanging over the bed disappears in several of the color plates, then reappears at the end.
• the room lighting grows progressively darker.
• the moon rises in the left-hand window.
• the socks disappear from the drying rack.
• the open book in the bookshelf is The Runaway Bunny.
• the book on the nightstand is Goodnight Moon.
• in the painting of the cow jumping over the moon, the mailbox in the right-hand side of the painting occasionally disappears.
• in the painting of the three bears, the painting hanging in the bears' room is a painting of a cow jumping over the moon.
• the painting of the fly-fishing bunny, which appears only in two color plates, appears to be black and white (or otherwise devoid of color). It is very similar to a picture in the book "The Runaway Bunny".
• the number of books in the bookshelf changes.
• the pendulum of the bedside clock disappears in the final room scene
• the stripes on the bunny's shirt change
• in the last page the word bunny is gone off the brush
• on the last page the mouse has eaten the mush

Literary significance and reception

Goodnight Moon slowly became a bestseller. Annual sales grew from about 1,500 copies in 1953 to 20,000 in 1970; and by 1990, the total number of copies sold was more than 4 million.

Author Susan Cooper writes that the book is possibly the only "realistic story" to gain the universal affection of a fairy-tale, although she also noted that it is actually a "deceptively simple ritual" rather than a story.

Brown bequeathed the royalties to the book to (among many others) Albert Clarke, who was the nine year old son of a neighbor when Brown died. In 2000, reporter Joshua Prager detailed in the Wall Street Journal the troubled life of Mr. Clarke who has squandered the millions of dollars the book has earned him and who believes that Brown was his mother, a claim others dismiss.

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. Kate Jackson, editor in chief for children's books, said "It is potentially a harmful message to very young kids." 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." HarperCollins has said it will likely replace the picture with a different, unaltered photo of Hurd in future editions. In response, a satirical article demanded the removal of other potentially dangerous objects in the book, such as the fireplace and balloon (a choke hazard for young children).

The book is also available in French, Spanish, Hebrew, Swedish, Korean and Hmong translations.

Allusions and references

Allusions to other works

Goodnight Moon contains a number of references to The Runaway Bunny. For example, the painting hanging over the fireplace of "The Cow Jumping Over the Moon" first appeared in The Runaway Bunny. However, when reprinted in Goodnight Moon, the udder "for caution's sake was reduced to an anatomical blur" to avoid the controversy that E.B. White's Stuart Little had undergone when published in 1945 (Making of Goodnight Moon, 21). The other painting in the room, which is never explicitly mentioned in the text, portrays a bunny fly-fishing for another bunny, using a carrot as bait. This picture is also a reference to The Runaway Bunny. The top shelf of the bookshelf holds an open copy of The Runaway Bunny, and there is a copy of Goodnight Moon on the nightstand.

The telephone is mentioned early in the book, but is absent from the litany of 'Goodnight ...' salutations. The primacy of the reference to the telephone indicates that the bunny is in his mother's room and his mother's bed.

Film, TV, music, or theatrical adaptations

In a 1998 movie Playing by Heart, Ellen Burstyn is reciting it to her son dying of AIDS, played by Jay Mohr.

In 1999, HBO released Good Night Moon and Other Sleepytime Tales, a set of animations mixed with vignettes of children talking about sleeping and dreaming. "Goodnight Moon" is the first story and is revisited again at the end of the 30-minute special.

A one-hour children's musical was recently adapted by Chad Henry and premiered in Seattle, Washington followed by a run at the North Shore Music Theatre. It is targeted towards very young children and includes many of the objects from the story such as the bears in chairs and the cow jumping over the moon coming to life. The Chicago Children's Theatre will run the musical in Chicago, Oct 27th - Dec 24th 2011, at the historical Victory Gardens Biograph theatre.

The Dixie Chicks released a song written by Rodney Foster called "Godspeed (Sweet Dreams)". It references "Goodnight Moon".

In The Wire episode Took, Kima Greggs ad libs a version to her son on the windowsill overlooking Baltimore cityscape and he repeats each line. "Goodnight moon, goodnight stars, goodnight po-pos, goodnight fiends, goodnight hoppers, goodnight hustlers, goodnight scammers, goodnight to everybody, goodnight one and all."

The Vancouver based indie band "Said The Whale," released a song called "Goodnight Moon" which contains direct references to the plot of the story book. Specifically, lyrics alluding to the children's book include "red balloon, great green room," and make reference to the childhood experience of the lyricist.

There is a reference to the book in Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?, as Batman lets himself fade into the afterlife he reminisces on the book and sets similar wording to Gotham City.

The final panel of Berke Breathed's comic strip Opus showed Opus sleeping with a copy of "Goodnight Moon". Unfortunately, this panel was available only online, and the Humane Society page that displayed it no longer exists.

In the episode of The Simpsons entitled "Insane Clown Poppy" Christopher Walken reads "Goodnight Moon" to a group of children, who recoil from his scary visage and tone despite his reassurances and exhortations for them to come closer.

In 2010 ASL Inside released an American Sign Language (ASL) version of Goodnight Moon through Scholastic. This version is available at http://www.aslinside.com and includes the original story, artwork, voiceover, music and read along captions.

A two-part episode of Knots Landing, broadcast in December 1987 was named "Noises Everywhere", after the final line of the book. The first part was the show's 200th episode. Both episodes - which were largely improvised by the cast - are considered an important moment in the show's history. They focus on the aftermath of the death of Laura Avery-Sumner, who had been present since the first episode. Laura has made a video, in which she says her goodbyes to her friends and family. In the closing moments of part two, Laura's infant daughter, Meg is seen alone in a room, watching her mother read "Goodnight Moon" to her on the video.

The Tallahassee, Florida band, Go Radio, released a song called "Goodnight Moon" on their EP Do Overs and Second Chances. Following the writing style of the story, the first line of the chorus reads "Goodnight moon and goodnight you," and ends "Sit in our bedroom and read aloud, like a passage from Goodnight Moon."

The group Shivaree recorded a song "Goodnight Moon," a narrative of trying to sleep alone while fearing night noises and imagined terrors. The last line and last chorus line is, "No it won't be too soon 'til I say goodnight moon."

In a Sunday version of the American comic strip Zits, Jeremy uses the "Goodnight..." phrase to describe a teenager going to sleep, ending with "Goodnight, dude."

In January 2011, German automaker Audi released a television advertisement showcasing the new A8. The commercial, conceived by the San Francisco-based advertising agency Venables Bell & Partners, was based on the book "Goodnight Moon". According to website greatads.blogspot.com, the highlight of the ad is a wry shot at Mercedes-Benz, with the phrase: "Goodnight old luxury and all of your wares, goodnight bygones everywhere", as a Mercedes S-Class shown in the driveway extinguishes its headlights. The commercial ends with "Good morning illumination, good morning innovation, good morning unequalled inspiration.", as features of the A8 sedan are shown.

Satire / Parody

An episode of Animaniacs features the segment "Nighty Night Toon", a direct parody of the book. It features a Sterling Holloway-like narrator and Slappy Squirrel as the Old Lady. A full-length parody of the book was published as Goodnight Bush.

An episode of the kids show Dinosaurs featured Grandma reading a copy of Goodnight Rock to Baby Sinclair.

Mad Magazine #400 contained the article Goodnight Room illustrated by Jack Syracuse and written by Desmond Devlin, depicting President Bill Clinton's last days in office.

McSweeney's featured a piece entitled Sparknotes: Goodnight Moon by Sean Walsh that uses Brown's book to parody the bloated elucidation of Sparknotes.

Goodnight Dune was created by Julia Yu and combines Goodnight Moon and Dune. It was inspired by a CollegeHumor post called Five Sci-Fi Children's Books.

Goodnight Keith Moon, written by Bruce Worden and Clare Cross, is a parody based on the death of The Who drummer, Keith Moon. The book features many references to The Who as well as to Cass Elliot who died in the same room years earlier.

For the 2011 Christmas season, writer and illustrator David Milgrim created Goodnight iPad under the pseudonym Ann Droyd. In it a houseful of children are busy interacting with various electronic devices, playing Angry Birds, watching 2001 on a large-screen TV and following Twitter feeds on mobile phones and tablet computers, until the mother rabbit throws all the devices out the window so everyone can sleep. "The thing that really inspired me about the idea was my fascination with how much things have changed since the world depicted in Goodnight Moon," the author told The New York Times. "Our homes are really nothing like that anymore. The contrast between that quiet book and our noisy, buzzing lives seemed ripe for exploration and humor."

Publication history

In addition to multiple octavo and duodecimo paperback editions, Goodnight Moon is available in board book edition, a book whose pages are actually stiff cardboard to make it suitable to give to a very young child, as well as a "jumbo" edition, suitable for use with large groups.

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

Sequels

My World, billed as "a companion to Goodnight Moon," and also written by Brown and illustrated by Hurd, was published in 1949.

References

• Marcus, Leonard S. Making of Goodnight Moon. New York: HarperTrophy, 1997.

• Pearson, Claudia H. Have A Carrot: Oedipal Theory and Symbolism in Margaret Wise Brown's Runaway Bunny Trilogy. Birmingham, Al: Look Again Press LLC. https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/21324