10 Things You Might Not Know About 'Goodnight Moon' and Its Creator

Brown was an inaugural member of the Bank Street Writers Lab in downtown Manhattan established by Lucy Sprague Mitchell in 1937 which encouraged the creation of books for children aligned with their growth and development. Brown was incredibly prolific and wrote over 100 children's books (some published posthumously) over the course of 14 years. Between 1946 and 1948, for example, she wrote 15 books in addition to Goodnight Moon. She collaborated with some of the most era-defining illustrators of the day including Clement Hurd, Garth Williams, Leonard Weisgard, Dahlov Ipar, H.A. Rey, Richard Scarry, Esphyr Slobodkina, Crockett Johnson, and Alice and Martin Provensen.

In her personal life, Brown's friends and family gave her many nicknames including "Brownie," "Tim," "Goldie," and "the Bun." Professionally, she published under pen names including Golden MacDonald, Timothy Hay, and Juniper Sage (a joint nom de plume with Edith Hurd, a friend from Bank Street and the wife of illustrator Clement Hurd). According to Clement Hurd, in an early handwritten version of Goodnight Moon, Brown had listed the authors as "Memory Ambrose" (the name of a friend's housekeeper) and the illustrator as "Hurricane Jones". 

Despite positive reviews, Goodnight Moon was only a modest commercial success during Brown's lifetime. It certainly didn't help that the book lacked The New York Public Library's stamp of approval and was missing from our shelves for its first 25 years (see below). But, fueled by word of mouth and the growth of bookstores, Goodnight Moon has endured to become a bedtime classic, translated for children all over the world, and is one of the best-selling children's books of all time. It has never been out of print. 

Although she was officially retired at the time, influential children's librarian and head of The New York Public Library's children's services, Anne Carroll Moore, famously disliked Goodnight Moon (dismissing it as overly sentimental). Her opinion carried such weight with former colleagues that the book wasn't put on shelves until 1972—a quarter century after it was first published. The delay kept it off the Library's Top 10 Checkouts of All Time (but check back in a few years!), but it was included in The New York Public Library's Books of the Century.

In addition to keeping your eye on the clock, the moon, the shadows, and that little mouse, there are some other surprises and meta moments in the images:

• There are three pictures hanging in the bunny's bedroom including one of a cow jumping over the moon and one of three bears. The bears are sitting in a room—in their room hangs the same picture of a cow jumping over the moon.
• The third picture? It's a scene from The Runaway Bunny, an earlier collaboration of Brown and Hurd published in 1942.
• On the bunny's bookcase is a book. Which book? Also The Runaway Bunny.
• On the bunny's bedside table is a book. Which book? Goodnight Moon, of course.
• Near the end of the book, there is a bit less mush in the bowl on the table—presumably eaten by the mouse creeping about.
• Although surely only recognizable to a few friends, the arched fireplace in the bunny's room is likely based on the one in Brown's writing studio at Cobble Court (see #8).

Leonard Marcus who wrote a biography of Brown, notes that she asked Clement Hurd to make a few adjustments to the pictures to not raise the hackles of tight-laced librarians and parents: removing the mouse from the bunny's bed (good call) and removing the cow's udder from the "cow jumping over the moon" picture on the wall. Years later, Hurd's photo on the dust jacket was digitally altered by HarperCollins to remove a cigarette from his hand so as not to appear to promote smoking.

Brown met William R. Scott and his wife Ethel McCullough through Bank Street and became the first editor of their publishing company, Willam R. Scott, Inc. At Brown's behest, Scott and McCullough reached out to famous authors including Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck to interest them in writing for children, but the only one who responded was Gertrude Stein who worked with Brown on The World is Round published in 1939 (illustrated by Clement Hurd).  

As an editor Brown was able to promote the careers of like-minded authors and illustrators including giving Clement Hurd his first illustrator job (Bumble Bugs and Elephants, 1938), editing Edith Thacher Hurd's first book (Hurry Hurry, 1938), and, after running out of illustrator jobs for her, encouraging Esphyr Slobodkina to take up a pen...resulting in the classic children's book Caps for Sale.

Place was extremely important to Brown. For parts of the late 1940s and early 50s she rented an 1800s farmhouse, dubbed Cobble Court, at 71st Street and York Avenue where she would escape away to work. In fact, it is likely that she wrote Goodnight Moon there. Tucked away from the street and only accessible through a passageway, the house was the inspiration for The Hidden House.  It was also depicted by illustrator Garth Williams in her book Mister Dog. Facing demolition, in 1967 the house was moved to 121 Charles Street in the West Village where it remains today.

Friends and frequent collaborators Clement and Edith Hurd were guests at Cobble Court in 1945. Clement described their arrival in a 1983 remembrance in Horn Book Magazine.

"To get to the backyard, we had to go through a passageway in the building on the street. The passage was cobbled, and at the end of it there was an old two-story clapboard house. I will never forget that first view as we stepped out into the courtyard and saw the little house with its welcoming lights shining softly from every window onto a dusting of new snow. When we went in, we found fires burning in both fireplaces, vases of fresh flowers in every room, fur rugs on the floor, lots of fur pillows, and a general sense of warm coziness reminiscent of the house in which the little fur family lived in Margaret's book illustrated by Garth Williams...We basked in the spiritual warmth of it all for a couple of weeks and then moved to the country when we suspected that Brownie might want her house back."

Goodnight Moon may now seem like such a simple book, but it was once considered unconventional, as was Brown's entire philosophy of writing for children (along with others at the Writers Lab). Instead of fables and fairy tales, Brown focused on the familiar, everyday sights and sounds in a child's life. From the "puff, puff, puff and chug, chug, chug" of a train and a mother's "hush" to wishing objects goodnight and noting what is "important" about things, she blazed a trail for a new type of writing for children.

"The important thing about a spoon is that you eat with it. It's like a little shovel, You hold it in your hand, You can put it in your mouth, It isn't flat, It's hollow, And it spoons things up. But the important thing about a spoon is that you eat with it." (The Important Book, 1949)

In her own life, Brown didn't follow a conventional path for a woman. She never married or had children (although she had many relationships including with a woman, Michael Strange, née Blanche Oelrichs, whose papers are at NYPL). She drove a convertible, wore fur coats, bought a house without electricity or plumbing on an island of Maine, and lived a spirited, independent life on her own terms.

Goodnight Moon, whose words and pictures are so well known, has been parodied multiple times in books including Goodnight iPad (2011) and Good Morning Zoom (2020). It has been adapted into a stage musical by composer and lyricist Chad Henry and is performed around the country. It's also been featured to comedic effect in The Simpsons, Maya and Marty, and Saturday Night Live. In 2021 the book was the subject of an immersive art exhibition by Fort Makers. And an Ohio bookstore owner was such a fan that she had the "great green room" recreated in her shop.

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