Goodnight Goon: A Petrifying Parody

Goodnight Goon: A (Not so) Petrifying Parody
Michael Rex - 2008

In a previous post I mentioned that Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd's Goodnight Moon is one of The Boog’s favorite bedtime books of all time! (At least for the time being) and millions of children agree since the book has been a kids' classic for over 60 years now. It’s a story of socks, clocks, kittens, mittens, chairs, bears and……. Well, I’m certain you have the entire thing memorized. Now forget that version and all the verses that you have recited and replace them with Michael Rex’s version, Goodnight Goon.

As a spinoff of Goodnight Moon, Goodnight Goon gets a fiendish makeover. The charming room is replaced by dungeon-like stones. The old bunny’s knitting becomes a voodoo doll. The three little bears sitting in chairs have become three little mummies, rubbing their tummies and Cows jumping over the moon turned into Martians “taking over the moon”. The pages boast an imaginative revision of the famous bedroom with furry little kittens to a tomb filled with monsters! Im not quite sure that The Boog is ready for Goodnight Moon’s evil twin just yet but you can be sure it’ll be waiting for her when she is!


P.S There is also a spinoff of The Runaway Bunny also by Margaret Wise Brown & Clement Hurd, which I have yet to check out. It’s called The Runaway Mummy. Like it’s predecessor, Little Mummy calls up all the ways he can declare his independence and thwart Mommy Mummy's attempts to capture him for bedtime.

Goodnight Moon

Goodnight moon

Margaret Wise Brown ~ Clement G. Hurd 1947

Today I will start with an obvious favorite of BOOG’s. Good Night Moon, which is both written and illustrated by two very big names in the children’s lit. circle, both past and present. First published in 1947, it remains the quintessential bedtime book even today. It is written by Margaret Wise Brown, in rhyme, and depicts a bunny’s bedtime ritual of saying Goodnight to the many items in his bed room . After reading this pretty much every night for a year and a half, one of BOOG’s favorite things about this book, and impart, what makes it a bedtime winner, is the detail in all of the illustrations.

The story takes place in the bunny’s bedroom but upon prolonged readings you’ll begin to notice the details in the illustrations, beautifully laid out by Clement G. Hurd, and one reading will never be the same as the next. For instance, the young mouse and kittens wander around the room. On various pages throughout the book, the mouse is present in different positions about the room. We can read it for a whole hour just searching for the mouse!

We loved it so much that we bought a huge lap edition, which BOOG has littered with an array of kitten stickers, and a tiny board book version to take with us when we travel. Even though we have read it a million and one times it’s still a nightly pick.