Goodnight Moon is an American children's book written by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Clement Hurd. It was published on September 3, 1947, and is a highly acclaimed bedtime story.
This book is the second in Brown and Hurd's "classic series," which also includes The Runaway Bunny and My World. The three books have been published together as a collection titled Over the Moon.
Background
In 1935, author Margaret Wise Brown enrolled at the Bank Street Experimental School in New York, NY.
Brown drew inspiration for the book from childhood bedtime rituals in which she and her sister said goodnight to toys and other objects in their nursery. In 1945, the memory reappeared to Margaret Wise Brown in a dream, inspiring the book that became Goodnight Moon. She wrote down the story in the morning, with the original title of the book being Goodnight Room. The NYPL and other libraries did not acquire it at first. During the post-World War II Baby Boom years, it slowly became a bestseller. Annual sales grew from about 1,500 copies in 1953 to almost 20,000 in 1970; , the book sells about 800,000 copies annually, and by 2017 had cumulatively sold an estimated 48 million copies. Goodnight Moon has been translated into at least fifteen other languages.
In 1952, at the age of 42, Margaret Wise Brown died following a routine operation, and did not live to see the success of her book.
Illustrator Clement Hurd said in 1983 that initially the book was to be published using the pseudonym "Memory Ambrose" for Brown, with his illustrations credited to "Hurricane Jones".
In 2005, publisher HarperCollins digitally altered the photograph of illustrator Hurd, which had been on the book for at least twenty years, to remove a cigarette. HarperCollins' editor-in-chief for children's books, Kate Jackson, said: "It is potentially a harmful message to very young [children]." HarperCollins had the reluctant permission of Hurd's son, Thacher Hurd, but the younger Hurd said the photo of Hurd with his arm and fingers extended, holding nothing, "looks slightly absurd to me".
Other editions
In addition to several octavo and duodecimo paperback editions, Goodnight Moon is available as a board book and in "jumbo" edition designed for use with large groups.
- 1991, US, HarperFestival , publication date September 30, 1991, board book.
- 1997, US, HarperCollins , publication date February 28, 1997, Hardback 50th anniversary edition.
- 2007, US, HarperCollins , publication date January 23, 2007, Board book 60th anniversary edition.
In 2008, Thacher Hurd used his father's artwork from Goodnight Moon to produce Goodnight Moon 123: A Counting Book. In 2010, HarperCollins used artwork from the book to produce Goodnight Moon's ABC: An Alphabet Book.
In 2012, Loud Crow Interactive Inc. released a Goodnight Moon interactive app.
Synopsis
The text is a rhyming poem, describing an anthropomorphic bunny's bedtime ritual of saying "good night" to various inanimate and living objects in the bunny's bedroom: a red balloon, a pair of socks, the bunny's dollhouse, a bowl of mush, an old woman (an older female anthropomorphic rabbit) who apparently says "hush", the moon outside the window, and two kittens, among others; despite the kittens, a mouse is present in each spread. The book begins at 7:00 PM, and ends at 8:10 PM, with each spread being spaced 10 minutes apart, as measured by the two clocks in the room and reflected (improbably) in the rising moon. The illustrations alternate between 2-page black-and-white spreads of objects and 2-page color spreads of the room, like the other books in the series (a common cost-saving technique at the time). The painting is itself a reference to the nursery rhyme "Hey Diddle Diddle," where a cow jumps over the moon. However, when reprinted in Goodnight Moon, the udder was reduced to an anatomical blur to avoid the controversy that E.B. White's Stuart Little had undergone when published in 1945. The painting of three bears, sitting in chairs, alludes to "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" (originally "The Story of the Three Bears"), In 2012 it was ranked number four among the "Top 100 Picture Books" in a survey published by School Library Journal.
When Goodnight Moon was first published, it was considered controversial for such reasons as its lack of educational message and its narrative being confined to a single room. According to children's literature expert Betsy Bird, Moore criticized Goodnight Moon due to the fact that she believed it lacked a meaningful narrative structure and educational value. Moore was considered a top taste-maker and arbiter of children's books not only in the New York Public Library, but for libraries nationwide in the United States, even well past her official retirement. Other authors have suggested that the book creates an atmosphere of peace and calm, and that unlike stories that merely use the night as a theme it can be helpful in putting children to sleep. Pereira first defines a "bedtime book" as a book that both "represents" bedtime and is about bedtime, and is meant to be read by a parent and child together. According to Stanton, this motif is present in much of Brown's work and is characterized by a child character finding resolution in being left alone.
On July 15, 1999, Goodnight Moon was announced as a 26-minute animated family video special/documentary, which debuted on HBO Family in December of that year, and was released on VHS on April 15, 2000, and DVD in 2005, in the United States. The special features an animated short of Goodnight Moon, narrated by Susan Sarandon, along with six other animated segments of children's bedtime stories and lullabies with live-action clips of children reflecting on a series of bedtime topics in between, a reprise of Goodnight Moon at the end, and the Everly Brothers' "All I Have To Do Is Dream" playing over the closing credits. The special is notable for its post-credits clip, which features a boy being interviewed about dreams but stumbling over his sentence, which soon became a meme in 2011 when it was uploaded on YouTube. He was referencing a line from the 1997 Disney animated film Hercules. The boy's identity was unknown until July 2021, when he came forward as Joseph Cirkiel in a video interview with YouTuber wavywebsurf.
Here are the other tales and lullabies featured in the video:
- Lullaby: "Hit the Road to Dreamland" sung by Tony Bennett (This lullaby plays in the opening credits, right before Goodnight Moon.)
- Lullaby: "Hush, Little Baby" sung by Lauryn Hill
- Story: There's a Nightmare in My Closet narrated by Billy Crystal
- Story: Tar Beach narrated by Natalie Cole
- Lullaby: "Brahms' Lullaby" sung by Aaron Neville
- Lullaby: "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" sung by Patti LaBelle
Musical adaptation
In 2012, American composer Eric Whitacre obtained the copyright holder's permission to set the words to music. He did so initially for a soprano, specifically his then wife Hila Plitmann, with harp and string orchestra. He subsequently arranged it for soprano and piano, SSA (two soprano lines plus alto; commissioned by the National Children's Chorus), and SATB (commissioned by a consortium of choirs).
In 2019 the Denver Center For The Performing Arts put on a 3-month production of Goodnight Moon as part of their Theatre For Young Audiences program. The 50 minute show included whimsical song and dance and had a second run just recently in 2025.
Exhibit adaptations
In 2006, an exhibit titled "From Goodnight Moon to Art Dog: The World of Clement, Edith and Thacher Hurd" was on display at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island. This exhibit featured 3-D displays of Clement Hurd's artwork, as well as artwork from his wife, Edith Hurd, and his son, Thacher Hurd. The exhibit depicts the scene where "Goodnight Moon" story takes place, representing the room with all the featured subjects in it. The exhibit is interactive: children are allowed to enter the space, touch the objects, lie on the bed, and play with the toys. Matthew-Robin Nye argues that the atmosphere created in the book is what makes it unique: "The book deviates from the standard fairy tale in that it does not have a moral, but a rhythm, a tempo. Because of this, it represents a major shift in how stories are told to us as we are developing; changing, in turn, how we develop. I believe that Goodnight Moon is the story of the environmental static around every fairy tale, the backgrounded processes vital to an experience, providing the lively textures from which a story stands out: in other words, experience for and of itself".