Why rabbits? Clement Hurd, an experimental artist without a background in children’s illustration, was terrible at drawing people. The red, green and yellow room often seems more alive than the characters that inhabit it. There is something static and emotionless about the bunnies, which allows readers to superimpose their own realities onto them. Indeed, the rabbits are stand-ins for a human child and “old lady whispering hush,” whose identity is never disclosed. Anthropomorphism, of course, means not having to deal with gender or race, so there’s that too.”
“If parents don’t want to talk about deeper issues with their children, it doesn’t ask them to do so. However, Woodson believes that the book has endured because it’s considered “safe,” or unthreatening. When I asked if Brown’s book shaped Woodson as a writer, she shared that the bedtime classic encouraged her own risk-taking when writing for children. “The ‘goodnight nobody’ always caught me by surprise and made me think, and I love picture books that make me think… I thought in including that ‘Goodnight nobody’ spread, Hurd and Brown were telling a quiet truth about emptiness and the world even as they cloaked it inside a young being’s fighting sleep.” When I interviewed Woodson over email, she shared that she was a longtime fan of Goodnight Moon, with the slight caveat that the book has limitations. Her YA memoir in verse, Brown Girl, Dreaming, novel for adults, Another Brooklyn, and picture book Each Kindness, are deeply beloved to me I also teach them to my library science graduate students, and have hosted Woodson at the high school library direct. I began asking other writers how they feel about the book, reaching out to literary luminaries like Jacqueline Woodson, a 2020 MacArthur Fellow, who has published books for children, adolescents and adults, and has won top awards for young people’s literature. These experiences sharpened my hunger to revisit a childhood favorite. Thomas Marshburn reading the bedtime classic from space, drifting through the air like the red balloon in the story. As a queer writer, mom and youth librarian, I was delighted by this novel and the fact that more writers are penning great “parenthood lit”-and that this one also illuminates an unsung queer literary heroine! I also viewed a video of NASA astronaut Dr. This book led me to Julia Fine’s boldly feminist novel, T he Upstairs House, the story of a depressed new mother who is haunted by Brown and her female lover, avant-garde performer Michael Strange.
I celebrated the occasion by reading Amy Gary’s fantastic biography, In the Great Green Room, written after Gary discovered hundreds of unpublished manuscripts by Brown in her sister’s attic. This fall, Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Clement Hurd, turns 75.
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