_Good Night Moon_, Margaret Wise Brown

[walkitout]

Does anyone pay attention to this when they are reading it? Because if you _do_ pay attention to it, it is some creepy. If you love this book, you might want to stop reading now.

First off, I get why it works. It is simple. It is concrete. It is repetitive. It is a catalog. This kind of thing Really Work for People. Like, whoa and like damn. Never, ever, ever underestimate the power of a catalog to bewitch and seduce. And it need only be marginally comprehensible to be effective (in fact, catalogs that are fully understood are much less powerful).

Now that that's out of the way, let's think about what's going on here. This is a _nursery_: a room where that kid probably spends every night and most of every day. That mush on the table makes it into the list with the comb and the brush because that kid eats that mush every day -- maybe more than once a day. The old woman who says hush and who knits? That would be the nanny, and not the nanny in the sense of the person who takes care of the kids while mummy and daddy go to work, but rather the person who takes care of the kid 24 X 6 and quite a few hours on the 7th day as well, and in a wealthy household there's a head nanny and then one nanny per kid.

That page where the kid goes, "good night nobody" that is mostly blank? Notice how the kid isn't thinking of saying good night to mummy and/or daddy and/or siblings. That "nobody" wasn't a philosophical or funny thing for that kid to say. That was a lonely, possibly developing attachment disorders moment that the kid probably experienced every night. It was "good night nobody" because it was too painful to even think of the absent person or persons who should have been central to the catalog of good nights.

_Now_, of course, when parents read this to their kid, the "nobody" is very present. But not so when Brown wrote the book.

Does anyone _notice_ this when they are reading it? Is this all an artifact of reading Gathorne-Hardy's _Unnatural History of the Nanny_?

Some analysis of this book points out that there is no good night to the telephone (rather conspicuously so, actually). Other things one might point out would include, hey, _there's a telephone_, what is that doing there? Well you should ask. The kid sure isn't going to be talking on it. This family may be so detached they issue instructions to the nanny over the phone, rather than risk interacting with the kid by coming all the way up to the attic to issue them in person. I'm not sure, really, one way or the other.

But jeez. That is some seductive catalog. A. is obsessed with this book. When we aren't reading one of the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse number books, or _Quiet, Loud_, or _Jungle Colors_ (a Backyardigans book), or Jez Alborough's _Hug_, or something by Boynton, we're probably reading this one. Altho we did rattle through some Seuss today, there were no requests for repeats.

Comments

[volkhvoi.livejournal.com]

Ah, this is very clarifying; I couldn't make any sense of "goodnight nobody". (Don't tell Berkeley Breathed any of your analysis! ;)

J thought the book odd enough that he was reading it aloud like it was a noir mystery novel.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

I always figured it was the same baby bunny as in _The Runaway Bunny_ (an even creepier book, to my mind), who was here staying with his rich grandma. There are a lot of references to _The Runaway Bunny_ in the illustrations. Does it actually ever say this is a nursery? I just remember the "big green room," which suggested to me that the child didn't sleep there all the time, as you don't usually refer to your own room by its color (I realize that's not great evidence: just recording that such was my reaction).

Oh, and apparently there was a sequel two years later, _My World_, which I've never read -- that one does talk about the parents. http://www.amazon.com/My-World-Companion-Goodnight-Moon/dp/0060247983

Have you ever read about Margaret Wise Brown's life? It's -- well, interesting is one adjective to start with. Definitely that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Wise_Brown

it doesn't say it is a nursery

[walkitout]

I looked at that wikipedia article, in part to confirm that Brown's childhood was compatible with a socioeconomic background, time, place, etc. in which nanny and nurseries would have been common. It was kind of a cool life! A sad death, of course, but I loved the bit about Michael Strange and would love to know more.

In the course of reading Gathorne-Hardy, I gathered several impressions about nurseries: that they were often at the top of the house/in the attic (as the green room is), that people frequently remembered them by their contents and/or decorating, rather than by an especial love of the people within (whether siblings or nannies or some combination thereof). The description in _Goodnight Moon_ struck me as fitting well within range.

I haven't read _The Runaway Bunny_, altho I have a different Brown book around somewhere that was published long after her death. I was unaware of _My World_. Perhaps when I'm feeling morbidly curious again, I'll go take a look. A. has lost interest in _Goodnight Moon_ (or, perhaps, lost track of it). The current obsession is _Not a Box_, which I thoroughly love and admire in every possible way.