The Enduring Wisdom of ‘Goodnight Moon’

Send To Pod

Original Article: The Enduring Wisdom of ‘Goodnight Moon’

Convert your long form article to podcast? Visit SendToPod

Follow me on Twitter to find out more.
----

---

The Great Read

It’s the first book many babies receive as a gift, and one of the few that parents will keep when their child is grown. Why does this 75-year-old story have such staying power?

Credit...

• Sept. 20, 2022Updated 2:13 p.m. ET

The first 25 times I read “Goodnight Moon,” I cried. Not in a dainty, tear-dabbing way; I’m talking Niagara waterworks, heaving sobs and a red nose.

My firstborn daughter was only a few days old, swaddled in a blanket printed with baleful teddy bears, when we made our first foray into the iconic picture book by Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd. I’d been a mother for long enough to know how little I knew: My bathing and feeding skills were weak. My diapering experience was limited to Cabbage Patch Kids. The one-handed stroller collapse that would become my signature maneuver was a mirage shimmering beyond a desert of sleepless nights.

Reading was something I could do with aplomb, and I thought the experience would be soothing for all involved — including my husband, who was sweating over instructions for a bottle sterilizer that looked like R2-D2. I picked “Goodnight Moon” because I remembered how veteran parents had slapped their hands over their hearts when I unwrapped the slim hardcover at my baby shower. The vote was unanimous: “That one is the best.”

Except it wasn’t. The book was maudlin and depressing. It lacked the wild abandon of “Jamberry” and the wacky nonsense of “There’s a Wocket in My Pocket!” The lone red balloon made me feel like I was staring down a well, and the font reminded me of a standardized test. Plus, “Goodnight nobody?” It was a knife to the heart. By the time I arrived at “Goodnight noises everywhere,” I was mopping my face with the teddy bear blanket.

For the uninitiated, “Goodnight Moon” tells the story of a rabbit getting ready for bed, bidding adieu to a series of items in his bedroom: a little toy house and a young mouse, “a comb and a brush and a bowl full of mush and a quiet old lady who was whispering ‘hush.’”

Image

That lady, a mature-looking bunny, sits in a yellow rocking chair, knitting (garter-stitch, nothing fancy) while the little guy makes his rounds. Was she his mother? Grandmother? Babysitter? How could she just sit there? Shouldn’t she hug the little bunny, soothe him, assure him that she was there for him? He looks so sad, clutching his knees, marooned in a too-big bed. Then she exits the room, leaving him in the dark with nary a backward glance. Unconscionable!

My husband quietly lifted our daughter out of my arms, his face arranged in the patient expression he wore while helping his grandmother into a minivan.

Around the time my daughter started preschool, I started to develop a grudging respect for “Goodnight Moon.” It takes two minutes to read, depending on the frequency of your audience’s interruptions to request an extension on bedtime. There are no flaps to lift, sound effects to approximate or thought bubbles to explain. The book has a pleasing, economical feel, like a mug with the perfect handle.

I appreciated that the bunnies don’t have their own shows, movies and theme parks. You won’t find them on boxes of Band-Aids or tubes of toothpaste. They aren’t as melancholy as the Velveteen Rabbit or as cheeky as Peter; they aren’t anodyne like Pat, sinister like Bunnicula or inscrutable like Miffy. I still didn’t actively seek out the great green room, but if someone nudged me across the threshold I could navigate without bawling.

Then our son arrived in the world like a comet breaki...