Kerlan Features: Goodnight Moon
Goodnight Moon
Written by Margaret Wise Brown
Illustrated by Clement Hurd
New York, Harper & Brothers, 1947
Process and finished art including book cover
Kerlan Collection, Children's Literature Research Collections
University of Minnesota Libraries
A student of Mitchell's in the mid-1930s, Margaret Wise Brown arrived at Bank Street a gifted but mercurial and undisciplined writer. She left a published author of the utmost originality, and with a thorough grounding in the child-development theories that Mitchell had helped pioneer. In the lulling mantra that is Goodnight Moon, Brown fashioned the quintessential "here and now" bedtime ritual, evoking a small child's safe and secure world. Life's everyday necessities—food, clothing, and shelter—are all present and accounted for. In the best progressive manner, children are themselves encouraged to bid goodnight to each of them in turn, thereby making the Great Green Room their own.