Goodnight Moon

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Marcus, the historian, told me that Brown’s use of real fur was quite possibly a nod to the work of the Surrealist artist Méret Oppenheim, who, for her 1936 work “Object (or Luncheon in Fur),” covered a teacup, a saucer, and a spoon with the fur of a gazelle. Brown met Hurd in 1938, after she saw a set of paintings that he’d done on the ceiling of a mutual friend’s Connecticut property. The painting is itself a reference to the nursery rhyme " Hey Diddle Diddle", where a cow jumps over the moon. She later declared that children were the true authors of many of her books: she was “merely an ear and a pen.

This sensual enjoyment of language was evident in “ Bumble Bugs and Elephants,” one of the first titles that Brown wrote and published for W. Many American adults remember it as their favourite bedtime story, and it continues to lull young children to sleep to this very day. But it also may have been a cheerful and cunning deflection away from an unintended absence in her life.Most distressing, perhaps, was Strange’s apparent disdain for Brown’s profession as a children’s-book author. Years later, Hurd's photo on the dust jacket was digitally altered by HarperCollins to remove a cigarette from his hand so as not to appear to promote smoking. What every kid needs, to learn that they are safe and secure in their bed, knowing their parents (or grandparents) are right there outside their door if they need them. Goodnight Moon, the classic bedtime book by Margaret Wise Brown with pictures by Clement Hurd, turns seventy-five this year.

Hurd became a mainstay of Brown’s, executing the drawings for “Goodnight Moon” and “The Runaway Bunny,” among others. In this classic of children's literature, beloved by generations of readers and listeners, the quiet poetry of the words and the gentle, lulling illustrations combine to make a perfect book for the end of the day. I also think this book could be very helpful if you have a small child is afraid of the dark; by reassuring the child that everything is the same even when the lights are out it may be just the story to help them overcome their fear. In the Life piece on Brown, from 1946, she proclaimed, “I don’t especially like children,” but she wrote of wanting to have some of her own before she turned thirty.Book based activities are such a great way to keep the learning going after the book is done so we have two more fun activities you can do after reading Goodnight Moon. As of 2007 [update], the book sells about 800,000 copies annually [5] and by 2017 had cumulatively sold an estimated 48 million copies. In 2010, HarperCollins used artwork from the book to produce Goodnight Moon's ABC: An Alphabet Book.

Other Books by Margaret Wise Brown Available in Harper Trophy Picture Books A New Edition of THE RUNAWAY BUNNY Now reissued with new illustrations by Clement Hurd “The gentle poetic story remains the same: within a framework of mutual love, a bunny tells his mother how he will run away and she answers his challenge by indicating how she will catch him. Barbara Bader, a historian of children’s literature, has described “Goodnight Moon” as “abstract in form and concrete in substance,” and its prose as “closest to Gertrude Stein and to the utterances of children. Critics have noted the influence of Steinian wordplay on several Brown works, including “ The Important Book,” “ Four Fur Feet,” and “ Red Light, Green Light,” which features repeated variations on the sentences “Red light they can’t go.She went on, “Children do not find the unusual piquant until they are firmly acquainted with the usual; they do not find the preposterous humorous until they have intimate knowledge of ordinary behavior.