The thing that makes this such a wonderful bedtime book for little kids is the story line plus the drawings. Each page gets darker and darker as your child falls asleep hearing the soft words you speak.

I think this is the best book ever written for a small child at bedtime. Runaway Bunny is close, but "Goodnight Moon" will be remembered by many children.

What a wonderful book...being read to every night before bedtime creating so many memories might be the reason why I love reading now. A good children's book included all of the most essential elements of my life: family (to read to me or listen to me attempt to read), good illustrations which equals good art, loveable characters and wonderful words. Some other good children's books: -In the Night Kitchen -Miss Spider's Tea Party and the other David Kirk books -Stellaluna (About the cutest little bat)... -Rainbow Fish -The Jolly Postman

This particular book had the delight of several little mice spread through out the pictures...I used to love finding them in each page. When I think of the book, I think of the mice and just the calmness that came from the illustrations and words.
Goodnight Moon is filled with references to classic fairy tales and nursery rhymes, including Goldilocks, Hey Diddle Diddle, the Three Little Kittens, and a reference to the old tale of the princess with the magic household objects (in which a mirror turns into a lake, a comb a forest, etc. Read Philip Jose Farmer's The Unreasoning Mask for another take on this strange tale).

There is one frightening picture in an otherwise gentle book. On the "Goodnight room" page, you can clearly see a framed picture of a rabbit flyfishing in a stream. However, his bait is a carrot, and he is catching a baby rabbit like the one going slowly to sleep in this story. Lovejoyman points out the book pictured on the little bunny's nightstand is actually a copy of Goodnight Moon.

This classic has been adapted into other forms, most notably the Animaniacs version, "Nighty-Night Toon", a litany of characters from the new Warner pantheon.


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That one frightening image described at the end of eponymous's writeup (the picture of a rabbit flyfishing for a baby rabbit with carrot bait) is an allusion to, if not an outright excerpt from, The Runaway Bunny, the children's classic mentioned in dannye's writeup. It depicts the mother rabbit's response to her young bunny's threat to turn into a fish and swim away from her. There's nothing frightening about it to anyone familiar with The Runaway Bunny, which I remember as every bit as suffused with love as Goodnight Moon, perhaps more so.

As a child, I always found Goodnight Moon too tranquil, preferring the action and interaction of the characters in The Runaway Bunny. Now I appreciate both (especially the beautiful illustrations), but Bunny still holds the fonder place in my heart. Maybe there's some kind of fundamental Bert and Ernie/Calvin and Hobbes-type dichotomy between Moon and Bunny afficionados.

A children's picture book written by Margaret Wise Brown, and illustrated by Clement Hurd. First published in 1947, and it's been a crowd-pleaser ever since.

The basic plot is that there is a child (who happens to be a bunny), who is going to sleep. Before doing so, he systematically wishes goodnight to everything in his room, and the moon.

The illustrations alternate between brightly colored full-page pictures of the bunny's room (growing darker and darker as the lights are turned out and the fire dies down), and black and white studies of various items that can be found in that room. The pictures aren't anything special, but they're busy enough to be visually interesting, and they rely heavily on contrast between bright shades of red, yellow, blue, and green, which really catches the eye.

The story is minimalistic, probably averaging about two lines a page. It's done completely in rhyme:

Goodnight room
Goodnight moon
Goodnight cow jumping over the moon
Goodnight light
And the red balloon

About eight pages are devoted to enumerating some of the major points of interest in the room (the picture of the cow jumping over the moon, and the red balloon, for example); the rest is an attempt at an exhaustive list of goodnights. Little kids love it.

When reading this book, remember to look for the mouse. He's in every one of the color pictures, and darn cute, too.

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