Goodnight Moon
- Written by Margaret Wise Brown
- Pictures by Clement Hurd
- Score: 1/5
This is a terrible children’s book and an even worse actual book. Obviously I am not going to criticize this book on the merits of story or nearly anything real because it is meant for small children. What’s more important in these sorts of books (I guess) is that there are simple words that maybe rhyme, accompanied by fun pictures.
Here are my complaints:
- This book alternates between full-color spreads, and black-and-white spreads. Why? This book was published in 1947 I guess, but surely you can just add color to all the pages. It’s 2022! Just add the color! It serves no purpose to keep the pages black and white.
- The book is difficult to read to a child until you’ve memorized it. When you read to a child, sometimes you need to face them with the book facing away from you and you need to hold it in a way so that you can view the book from the side or from above so you can read the words. The way the words in this book are distributed (randomly across corners) is confusing and makes it difficult to find the next passage after each turn of the page.
- The story goes about saying goodnight to various things located in the room including, some old lady whispering hush? Why is she just known as an old lady? Surely she’s like, a their grandma, or their nanny or something? She has a name! ALSO, there is a page where the protagnoist says “Goodnight Nobody”. What? Why?
Anyway. I hate this book. I read it to my kid a handful of times and I couldn’t stand it anymore so it “got lost” under the bed where it shall stay for eternity. Goodnight book.