;)
Goodnight Moon
In this canonical “here and now” book, which Lucy Sprague Mitchell thought gave the Bank Street pedagogy its most perfect form, Brown offers a lyrical meditation on the ordinary objects in a child’s bedroom—socks, clocks, a brush, a bowl of mush— bidding them each goodnight in turn. In line with The Bank Street’s emphasis on language play over narrative, Goodnight Moon is a relatively plotless poem that plays with rhyme, repetition, and a soothing rhythm. Clement Hurd’s surreal illustrations offer a visual story that runs parallel to the text, injecting details like the restless rabbit, the mice scurrying about the room, and a room that darkens so gradually as to almost be imperceptible. While firmly ensconced in the picturebook canon today, Anne Carroll Moore’s dislike for the book and her refusal to stock it in public libraries led to its being relatively unknown until the early 1970s.