Unlike so many children’s books, with their pat plots and clumsy didactics, it’s also one that parents can stand rereading-and not only for its soporific effect on their sons and daughters. 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. 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.Īuthor 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. Goodnight Moon has sold more than 48 million copies since it was published in 1947. The plot could not be simpler: A young bunny says goodnight to the objects and creatures in a green-walled bedroom, drifting gradually to sleep as the lights dim and the moon glows in a big picture window.
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