Goodnight Moon sold more than copies in its first year on the shelves, but in the years that followed, sales averaged just copies annually. Then, in the early s, the book enjoyed a sudden and dramatic resurgence , selling in , in , and 20, in By , total sales topped out at more than 11 million. The book, Writer's Almanac said, became a "word-of-mouth best-seller. It praised the book, saying , "It captures the two-year-old so completely that it seems almost unlawful that you can hypnotize a child off to sleep as easily as you can by reading this small classic.
And, in fact, never married. At least not as a group. It's not an entirely surprising choice for a woman who never really settled down, and took long, solo trips around Europe.
But it also may have been a cheerful and cunning deflection away from an unintended absence in her life. I have 50 books. Just a few months before she died suddenly from an embolism following emergency surgery in Nice, France, the year-old Brown—who at the time was engaged to a much younger man—drafted a will.
In it, she left the royalties to Goodnight Moon and 68 other titles to a young boy named Albert Clarke. She had befriended his mother through a colleague at Bank Street and lived near the family on East 71st Street in Manhattan. In the years since it debuted, Goodnight Moon has never been out of the press long.
In , Baltimore's The Sun included it on a list of the best bedtime stories, and in , the Chicago Tribune called it "one of the most enduring in children's literature.
Two years later, a modern parody, Goodnight iPad , was published. And in , The New York Times 's Opinion Pages published an ode to the book extolling not just how effectively it soothes sleep into restless children, but also the subtle and searing literary value—how it "subverts its own rules even as it follows them. Goodnight Moon has sold more than 48 million copies since it was published in It has been translated into at least a dozen languages, from Spanish to Hmong, and countless parents around the world have read it to their sleepy children.
Author Margaret Wise Brown, subject of a new biography, based Goodnight Moon on her own childhood ritual of saying goodnight to the toys and other objects in the nursery she shared with her sister Roberta, a memory that came back to her in a vivid dream as an adult. The text she jotted down upon waking is at once both cozy and unsettling, mimicking and inducing the unmoored feeling that comes with drifting away to sleep.
This exercise feels dangerous, since a close reading may raise more questions than answers when was the bunny planning to eat that mush, anyway? She may not be a household name like Beatrix Potter or Dr. In college, she admired Modernist writers like Virginia Woolf and Gertrude Stein, although she devoted more energy to the equestrian team than to academics.
After breaking off an engagement with a well-bred beau she overheard him laughing with her father over how to control her , she moved to Manhattan to pursue a vague literary ambition, living primarily on an allowance from her parents.
Brown loved the hustle and bustle of city life, but the short stories she wrote for adults failed to interest publishers. Sprague, basing her ideas on the relatively new science of psychology and on observations of how children themselves told stories, believed that preschoolers were primarily interested in their own small worlds, and that fantasy actually confused and alienated them.
It was important not to talk down to them, she realized, and yet still to speak to them in their own language. It is not stated who is telling the story but it can be assumed that it is from the little rabbit's perspective. However, while a young child is reading the story, it is very easy for the reader to take on the point of view and pretend they themselves are saying goodnight to the things in the room.
The importance of rituals -- The little rabbit cannot go to bed before he says goodnight to nearly everything in the room. Innocence -- The outside world seems to have no effect on what is happening when the little rabbit is going to bed. He is not worried about life tomorrow or the problems that may have occurred during the day. He is just happy to be in bed and say goodnight to all of the objects in his bedroom.
This theme is also prevalent in the idea that the little rabbit saying goodnight to inanimate objects in an effort to reassure them as he is being reassured himself. Goodnight Moon uses the same style of font throughout the whole story, which is a simple bold font. On the black and white pages, the font is in black located below the images, aligned to the left.
On the colored pages, the font is written in orange located in the corner of the page in dark blue bubbles. There are many artistic elements to this book. The illustrator uses bright water colors to make certain aspects stand out. Bright reds are used for the floor and a vivid green is used for the walls of the room. When the room is shown as a whole, color is used to make the room inviting and warm. Goodnight Moon is illustrated in two types of drawings one being small ink drawings in black in white like the kittens, mittens and cow jumping over the moon.
The other is wide bright colors, full spread between two pages of the little rabbits room. But when individual aspects of the room are shown, they are black and white. On the pages where the black and white pictures are shown in the center of the page, demonstrated above, with white empty space around it, the negative space is making a type of silhouette of the pictures. This makes the reader focus on the image, since besides this illustration in the middle, and the black text below it, the page is empty and white.
In one page, the author and illustrator use the white space as the object indicated by the text. This shows the readers that all of the aspects of the room need to be included for it to be complete. The pictures play a huge role in the story because there is so little text on each page.
Instead of having the readers focus on what the text is saying, the pictures help tell more of what is going on in the story. This story is heavily focused on the illustrations, but still needs the text to make sense of the story. If the text of saying good night to the objects was not present, the story would only consist of pictures of items in the rabbit's room. This book presents a unique aspect which is very enjoyable to young readers and that is being able to search for pictures mentioned in the text in the main picture in this book, the great green room.
This is a very fun activity that provide the reader with incentive to read the text. Reading the text provides the reader with next object to find in the main room. This also promotes the reader to passively associate words in the text with objects in the pictures. Goodnight Moon is drawn in the form of representational art.
The illustrations show a realistic portrayal of characters and objects. The rabbits are drawn to look realistic of what the reader would imagine them to look like. There are also pet cats playing with yarn on the floor, and pictures of cows, and bears that appear to be accurate to real life.
The objects in the room are also accurate, like the fireplace, bookshelf, toy house, and furniture. Lastly, the events taking place in the story are literal as the little rabbit is saying goodnight to the objects in his room along with the moon and the stars. The composition of this book has two general styles.
On these pages, the text is located in the corner of the page, in dark blue bubbles. The other composition style in this book is white pages with black and white pictures in the middle. Here, the text is written below the picture in black. This picture book is exceptionally effective in literary terms and with it's artwork. The author is able to turn a simple book into a bedtime classic.
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