Goodnight Moon
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Goodnight Moon is a children's book written by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Clement Hurd. It was first published in 1947, and is a highly-acclaimed example of a bedtime story. The content of the book is itself a bedtime story, depicting the process of saying goodnight to everything around. "Goodnight moon, goodnight stars..."
Goodnight Moon is considered a classic in children's literature. The book is a poem, written in a simple rhyme form. It contains illustrations of many objects familiar to a child, including a recurring mouse. Part of the activity of reading this book is identifying these objects in the illustrations. As the book progresses, the room depicted gets continuously darker, the moon rises higher in the sky, and the time on the clock gets later.
Readers familiar with Wise Brown's other works may notice that on the fifth spread, one of the paintings on the wall is actually a drawing from "The Runaway Bunny." There is also a copy of "The Runaway Bunny" on the bookshelf and a copy of "Goodnight Moon" on the nightstand.
It is published in a board book edition, a book whose pages are actually stiff cardboard to make it suitable to give to a very young child. It is also published in a 'jumbo' edition, suitable for use with large groups.