The Curious Influences On The Creation Of Goodnight Moon

March 24, 2023 Courtney Ahlstrom Christy

Bunny enjoys a good read. Source: Author.

Decades had passed since I last opened the covers of Goodnight Moon. My memories of it were fuzzy, well, like that of a bunny.

As a youngster, the story struck me as quite bizarre [1]. It was familiar and yet not. What’s with the fireplace and changeling pictures? And why is there mush on the table? What the heck even is mush?

Every few pages, the mood darkens, and objects move. Meanwhile, a chanting lullaby of miscellany ushers you into a dreamy state those elders desire. Of all the books over the years, this vintage children’s tale remains one of the most impressionable.

Since the 1950s, it’s rare to find an American who doesn’t have a childhood memory of Goodnight Moon. Authored by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Clement Hurd, total sales of the book topped out at more than 11 million by the year 2000. [2] Some of us have a more recent relationship with this classic, especially if you happen to be reading it to a little one over and over and over again.

As Amy Crawford for Smithsonian Magazine succinctly describes, the plot is simple: “A young bunny says goodnight to the objects and creatures in a green-walled bedroom, drifting gradually to sleep as the lights dim and the moon glows in a big picture window.”[3]

Narrating the book as an adult, I still have that same surreal feeling. Although these days, I identify more with the quiet old lady saying “hush” than the tucked-in rabbit. Its appeal endures to the next generation, as evidenced by my son’s enjoyment of the book on repeat.

With the mantra of ‘a comb and a brush and a bowlful of mush’ uttered each evening in my home, it made me wonder about the author and the book’s background. After all, the story remains evergreen and even parodied - a rare feat in today’s children’s lit market. So I read biographies about Brown and learned what a character she was herself.

Below, let me share with you some of the curious influences on the creation of Goodnight Moon. May it bring a fresh perspective to your umpteenth reading. It certainly did for me.

Childhood Memories

A particular dream in adulthood invoked those old memories from Brown’s childhood to create a bedtime story. She and her sister Roberta had a nightly ritual of saying goodnight to their toys, rocking horse, chairs, books, and pictures on their walls.” [4]

In the dream, her bedroom took on the color scheme of a neighbor’s living room [5] - bright green walls accented by red furniture with yellow trim. Instead of bidding goodnight to toys, she spoke to a telephone, a lamp, and a brush. After waking and scribbling quickly, Brown immediately called her editor Urusual Nordstrom with the idea for a book. She mentioned her desire for the illustrations to show a bedroom slowly dimming as the story drew to an end.[6]

Beagle Club sign, photography by Barbara Ellen Koch. 2005. Source: Riverhead News-Review.

Bunny Hunting

Now, this was a bit of a surprise to me — a children’s book author, who featured many rabbit characters in her stories, was a hunter. As a member of the Buckram Beagle Club in Long Island, Brown ran on foot with hounds in pursuit of rabbits. The author was quite athletic most of her life and won the national title of the fastest woman in the sport of beagling.[7]

Rabbits became almost a personal emblem for Brown. Yet, for someone who recognized the comforting softness and vulnerability of rabbits. [8] it is paradoxical that she would chase them for sport. Biographers mentioned that she was not disturbed by the rare occasion of a kill; her thoughts were rather with the hounds describing them as “the grooms in Macbeth”. [9] It seems she captured furry creatures both in life and in writing, with varying degrees of sentimentality.

Portrait of Gertrude Stein, New York, 1934. Source: Wikipedia.

Gertrude Stein

As a storyteller, Brown was influenced by contemporary thought that was cutting edge at the time. She was especially devoted to Gertrude Stein’s style of writing. A renowned American ex-pat and art collector, Stein made the occasional tour of the U.S. to discuss her work as an author. When Stein made an appearance at Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brown was one of the many attendees who packed the auditorium to hear her speak. She deeply admired Stein’s ability to convey complex thoughts through clear language. [10]

And when Brown heard a radio broadcast of an interview with Stein comparing her writing to the nursery rhyme “A Tisket a Tasket”, it struck her that Stein might be interested in writing for children. [11] Her initiative led to Stein creating The World is Round for the publisher William R. Scott Inc., whom Brown was working for at the time. [12]

The aspiring author longed to befriend her literary hero in person. She even sent letters to Stein expressing her admiration and involvement in publishing The World is Round. Regretfully, the correspondence never developed beyond brief but kind responses from Stein, which Brown treasured and kept in a scrapbook. [13] Nevertheless, Brown’s writing style continued to be impacted by a Stein-esque repetition as a way to reinforce understanding.

Here-and-Now Style

Archival photo from the Bank Street Nursery School. Source: Bank Street Occasional Paper Series, Volume 2014, No, 31, Article 8.

Before finding success as a children’s author, Brown worked at a progressive preschool in Greenwich Village, best known as Bank Street. [14] The school became famous for its ‘Here-and-Now’ style of learning. The educational founder Lucy Sprague Mitchell believed education should be a cooperative adventure where children were met at their own stages of development. The philosophy was based on the relatively new science of psychology. Teachers observed the students’ behavior and their natural interest in pretending real-life scenarios rather than creating fantasies at this early age. They also learned the importance of speaking respectfully to children in simple and direct language. [15]

Mitchell was also interested in creating children’s books that reflected the school’s ethos. During the 1930s, most children’s literature was still sourced from 19th-century moralizing fables and fairytales. Those imagined faraway lands went against the Here-and-Now preference for reflecting the real world. [16] In response to a lack of contemporary reading material, Mitchell began a writers’ collective known as the Writers Laboratory. [17]

It was in this environment that Brownie (Brown’s nickname at the school) read aloud drafts of stories to her young target audience. [18] She honed her craft, making note of when they were captivated and what bored them. [19] In some ways, observing children at Bank Street was another type of sport for Brown, this time in a battle of wits. [20] The result was finding catchy word rhythms that resonated with a child’s linguistic understanding yet also entertained them. For the Here-and-Now style, she infused the everyday with a sense of whimsy: two little kittens, pair of mittens, a little toy house, and a young mouse... As biographer Amy Gary commented, Mitchell may have been the impetus of the Here-and-Now style of writing, but Brown “gave it wings.” [21]

Margaret Wise Brown and Crispin’s Crispian at the Cobble Court cottage in the late 1940s. Source: Life magazine, 2 Decemeber 1946 issue,

Cobble Court & Clem Hurd

Cobble Court was Brown’s beloved writing studio in Greenwich Village from the late 1940s to the early 1950s. [22] Once part of an old farmhouse, the building supposedly earned the nickname ‘Cobble Court’ because of the cobblestones that surrounded it. [23] It is exactly what you imagine a children’s author residing in - a quirky white-clapboard house dwarfed by Manhattan skyscrapers.

Good friend and illustrator Clem Hurd even spent a December night at Cobble Court with his wife. The living room turned bedroom featured an arched fireplace and fur coverings such as a leopard-skin stool next to the bed covered in a red comforter. [24] Soon after, Hurd was asked to illustrate Goodnight Moon. Brown must have been delighted to see her cozy dwelling transformed into the saturated setting of her latest tale.

When Brown sent the manuscript to Hurd, she also enclosed a picture of Goya’s Boy in Red as a source of inspiration. Perhaps that is how those two kittens became part of the room ensemble. [25] And as a nod to their past collaborations, Hurd included framed scenes from The Runaway Bunny and The Cow Jumping Over the Moon.

A Controversial Udder

Speaking of the cow, you may have noticed that its depiction is not anatomically correct. The choice to ‘modify’ the udder was an editing decision so as not to offend any librarians. Yet, the book was nevertheless rejected by The New York Public Library. The influential NYPL children’s librarian Anne Carroll Moore loved those old fairytales and detested the vanguard Here-and-Now style.

Although in retirement by the time Goodnight Moon was published, Moore still held sway over her successor Francis Sayers who refused to have Brown’s book as part of the library’s collection. It wasn’t until 1973 that NYPL finally reversed its decision and placed the book with its altered bovine on the shelves. [26]

Margaret Wise Brown, photograph by Philippe Halsman, 1946. Source: Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery.

What Didn’t Get In

In Brown’s first penciled draft, she added a note that she wanted the last page to have a little drawing of the child saying goodnight to a cucumber and a fly. Quite a surrealist ending that I wouldn’t mind seeing as a special edition.

Her early manuscript also used nome de plumes. The author was noted as ‘Memory Ambrose’, a name she co-opted from her old beau’s housekeeper. And the illustrator was named ‘Hurricane Jones’ after one of the islands near her summer home in Maine. Her editor Nordstrom chose to extract these odd bits but did keep the original title. [27]

A Passionate Editor & Another Rabbit Hole

As often happens, one biography leads to another fascinating person. In this case, it has led to Ursula Nordstrom. As editor-in-chief of Harper & Row’s Books for Boys and Girls from 1940 to 1973, Nordstrom was highly influential behind the scenes of many iconic American children’s literature in the 20th century.

In her role in publishing, Nordstrom was an advocate for allowing young readers to connect to their inner lives. [28] In fact, she has been credited with allowing a generation of authors to create stories that resonated with a child’s full spectrum of emotions and imaginative potential. In addition to Goodnight Moon, Nordstrom was a literary doula to Where the Wild Things Are, Harriet the Spy, Harold and the Purple Crayon, The Giving Tree, and Charlotte’s Web.

As far as creative godmothers go, it sounds like she was one of the best at sprinkling her editorial wisdom on the authors and artists she nurtured. Perhaps when I finish my ritual reading of Goodnight Moon, I can open the pages of Dear genius and learn more about this ‘Patron Saint of Modern Childhood.’ [29]

Endnotes:

1. Of course, I didn’t know the word “bizarre” then. But isn’t that so very much the experience of early childhood?

2. Hannah Keyser, “11 Fascinating Facts About Goodnight Moon”, Mental Floss, 1 November 2021.

3. Amy Crawford, “The Surprising Ingenuity Behind “Goodnight Moon”, Smithsonian Magazine, 26 January 2017.

4. There was also the influence of Brown’s old family library room and its kelly-green painted walls. Amy Gary, In the Great Green Room: The Brilliant and Bold Life of Margaret Wise Brown, New York: Flatiron Books, 2017, p. 43.

5. Gary, p. 169.

6. Keyser, Mental Floss.

7. Karen MacPherson, “The bold, boisterous woman behind the classic children’s tale ‘Goodnight Moon’ “ for The Washington Post, 9 July 2017.

8. Gary, p. 220.

9. Leonard S. Marcus, Margaret Wise Brown: Awakened By the Moon, New York: William Morrow, 1999, p. 158.

10. Gary, pp. 60-61.

11. Marcus, p. 158.

12. Gary, p. 56.

13. Gary, pp. 60-61.

14. Officially, the school was known as the Bureau of Educational Experiments’ Cooperative School for Student Teachers or Bank Street College of Education. Gary, p. 79.

15. Gary, p. 65.

16. Amy Crawford, “The Surprising Ingenuity Behind “Goodnight Moon”, Smithsonian Magazine, January 26, 2017.

17. Keyser, Mental Floss.

18. Gary, p. 77.

19. Leonard S. Marcus, The Making of Goodnight Moon: A 50th Anniversary Retrospective, New York: Harper Collins, 1997, np.

20. Gary, p. 66.

21. Marcus, p. 78.

22. In 1967, it was relocated to the West Village. Source: Village Alliance website. Gary, p. 77.

23. Sydney Rose "The 'Goodnight Moon' House (Cobble Court)", Atlas Obscura, 2 October 2020.

24. Gary, p. 224, 236.

25. Keyser, Mental Floss.

26. Dan Kois, “How One Librarian Tried to Squash Goodnight Moon”, Slate, 13 January 2020.

27. Gary, p. 163.

28. Kelly Blewett, "Ursula Nordstrom and the Queer History of the Children’s Book". Los Angeles Review of Books, 28 August 2016.

29. Maria Popova, "How Ursula Nordstrom, the Greatest Patron Saint of Modern Childhood Stood, Up for Creativity Against Commercial Cowardice", The Marginalian, 2 February 2015.

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