Goodnight Moon

Title: Goodnight Moon

Author: Margaret Wise Brown
Pictures By: Clement Hurd
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0064430170


The story of Goodnight Moon is very simple. It is in essence the bedtime story of all bedtime stories. It is the perfect bedtime story because it is such as easy read for parents but is also very easy to understand for young children.  The premise for the story is a young rabbit going to sleep.  However, before he can go to bed he has to say goodnight to everything in his great green room.  The rabbit says goodnight to each individual object and creature in his room including the kittens, the mouse and the little old lady whispering hush.  In reading this story as an adult, I have come to recognize the game that rabbit is playing in prolonging the time before he goes to sleep.  Perhaps this was not Margaret Wise Brown's intention, but I see this now as a wink and nudge to anyone who has tried to put a child to bed.  One feature of this story that creates the perfect bedtime story is that the lines of the story are short and to the point, they are as simple as the story itself, no fancy wording or unfamiliar words and perhaps that is where the lulling melody of the story is born.


Goodnight Moon is considered a picture book because the pictures are the emphasis of the story, it would seem quite silly for these simple sentences to be strung together without the vivid pictures.  I also think that Goodnight Moon can be categorized as a pattern book because of the repetition of the word goodnight, with clues as to what rabbit is saying goodnight to.  It can also be categorized as a circular story because first Margaret Wise Brown names all of the things in the room and then rabbit loops back around and says goodnight to them.  This book is even interactive because the child can point to each of the items that is mentioned throughout the story.  I remember this being one of the first books that I could read.  Looking back I may have simply memorized the story.  As I turned the pages as I read this book this evening I found myself knowing what the sentence on the next page was, it was as if memories of my memorization at four came flooding back.  It is quite an incredible feat for a book to capture an audience so much so that twenty years later the memorized lines came back without missing a beat.


The illustrations in Goodnight Moon are at times more important than the lines of the story.  The colors are vibrant but fade as the story progresses.  The green gets darker as the night creeps in through the window in the great room, which is one of the most mood provoking techniques for illustrations that I have ever seen, by the end of the story everyone is yawning!  Even though there are so many things going on in the room -- bright colors, patterns, jumping kittens, rocking old ladies, a floating red balloon, however, it never once feels overwhelming. One of the ways in which this is accomplished is the subtle black and white drawings that are sprinkled throughout the story, they offer refuge from the vibrancy and offer a calm visual as the child tries to go to sleep.  Regardless of how mismatched the room may seem when dissected, it all seems to fit together flawlessly in Clement Hurd's illustrations.  I think that the attention to detail in this story is what brings it to life.  One detail that I followed as a child was that the mouse is visible in each of the colored pictures of the great green room, I remember searching for the small mouse next to the mittens, in front of the fireplace and even next to the bowl full of mush.


In the classroom I believe that this book should be used with young children, perhaps in preparation for a rest period.  I think reading this book aloud in a small group may be the most conducive to getting the most out of the book.  I would ask students to point out the various objects and creatures that rabbit is saying goodnight to and I may even ask students to find the mouse in each of the colored pictures. I think that this book obviously lends itself to a quiet activity, perhaps if a child is having trouble adapting to the classroom and having separation anxiety this could be a comfort to them. 


To me, Goodnight Moon became a very comforting story.  When I moved from New York to Florida my Dad used the story to show that even though we had moved, my world was not that different.  My father would go around the room in the same way that they did in the story and we would say goodnight to all the same things that we had said goodnight to in New York.  That is perhaps one of the reasons that this story has such significant meaning to me.  Reading is such an important part of a child's life, and I believe that beginning with this story and following through the thousands of stories that came after, I became a lover of books through quality children's literature.  When searching for the perfect Caldecott Winner to review for my last blog I remembered being a child and feeling as though all books were Caldecott Award winning books.  I realize now that not all books are, however, the great majority of the books that my father chose to read to me, were in fact award-winning books.  His yearning for quality literature for me turned into a love of quality literature for myself.

Where The Wild Things Are

Title: Where The Wild Things Are - 1963
Author and Illustrator: Maurice Sendak
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0060254920

Where The Wild Things Are won the Caldecott Medal of Honor in 1964.  The medal was given to the book for being the most distinguished picture book of the preceding year and, I believe, with great reason.  The story of the wild things and a young boy named Max is a classic.  The story begins with a little boy named Max who is dressed as a wolf and is being naughty.  His mother calls him a "wild thing" and as a response Max yells back "I'll eat you up!", he was naughty enough to be sent to his room without dinner.   Max is in his room and a forest begins to grow, the walls of his room disappear, the ocean appears and he sails off through the night and day to where the wild things are.  At first the wild things roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth, they rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws but then Max was able to tame them with his magic trick of staring into their yellow eyes and not blinking.  The wild things called Max the most wild thing of all, they made him king and the wild rumpus started, and they all danced and climbed and paraded around.  Then Max stopped the wild rumpus and sent the wild things to bed without supper but Max was lonely and wanted to be where someone loved him best of all.  Max gave up being king of the wild things and even though the wild things protested and cried "we'll eat you up - we love you so!" Max climbed into his boat and waved goodbye.  Max sailed back through the night into his very own room, and there he found his supper waiting for him -- and it was still hot. 

I have always loved this book, I loved it as a child when my father read it to me, I loved it when my childhood was recreated for a big time Hollywood movie and perhaps most of all, I love reading it to the children in my class.  The story is simple and I believe that is a big part of the charm.  A young boy is sent to his room without supper because he is being naughty, a simple concept and while most children aren't really sent to bed without dinner, all can relate to being sent to their rooms. Once being sent to their room most children will daydream and Max's daydream takes him far far away from his room and the trouble he has caused.  At first the wild things, like all things that are new and exciting, seem much better than the alternative of sitting in his room and thinking about what he had done.  However, as time goes on and Max begins to feel lonely, he realizes there's no place quite like home.  When the wild things say "we'll eat you up - we love you so!" it is a direct reference to when Max yells to his mother "I'll eat you up!".  The wild things are displaying the naughty behavior that Max got in trouble for in the first place.  By injecting the word love into the sentence of the wild things we are reminded that even though Max was very angry when he spoke of eating his mother up - there is still love.  The twist that Sendak puts on this sentence allows it to mean something entirely different.  Once Max arrives back, he realizes that his instincts were spot on, home is better, his dinner is sitting there waiting for him and it's still hot, which I feel is an image representing love.

The illustrations in this book, which are also done by Maurice Sendak, are incredible.  They are detailed and colorful but all have a similar vibrancy.  The wild things are somewhat scary with their strange, huge heads and horns and teeth and yellow eyes but they also have a sweetness to them.  The different textures of the wild things are incredibly interesting, the scales and feathers and fur, all of the wild things have animal attributes but not all of the attributes match on each particular wild thing.  After Max declares "let the wild rumpus start!" there are six pages that are simply pictures without any words, but the idea and feeling of what a wild rumpus is completely comes across.  There is no question as to what Maurice Sendak means by "wild rumpus" even though they are not words that the average child may know, that is the power of these illustrations.  The last page simply says the words "and it was still hot." there is nothing more that is necessary, the emotion of this line is indescribable, it simply reiterates that no matter how bad you believe it to be at home, things may be worse out in the world.

I think that it is an incredible book to read aloud because of the wonderful sound effects that can be incorporated by the wild things.  I think that is also a good conversation starter because it opens discussions about fantasy and reality, what we are afraid of and whether we should be afraid.  The story is also about the imagination of a child, which is limitless and through Max's adventure we are able to see this.  The lesson that Max learns is one that most children eventually learn -- there is no place like home.