Goodnight old lady whispering “hush”?!

It’s official.  We are on the verge of a veritable coupe in children’s literature, mark my words.  For over 60 years we have been told that “we LOOOOooooOOOOVE Goodnight Moon.”  Apparently, we do not.

Over the course of two days I overheard the following:

Jakey’s Dad: This book is dumb.  And a little toyhouse, And a young mouse.  Goodnight mush?  Goodnight old lady whispering “hush”?  What?

(I’m pretty sure “toy house” should be two words and what’s with the “young” mouse?  What’s also weird about this is that the picture of the old lady is actually a rabbit knitting, not an old lady.  The rabbits wear nightgowns and use furniture like people but the kittens and the mouse are normal animals that just sit on the floor.  Don’t even get me started on animals in people’s clothing, especially with human hands… creeeeepy.)

Jakey’s Grantmother: There were no books.  We had to read that dumb Goodnight Moon.

And on Sunday night’s new Desperate Housewives Lynette Scavo laments on having to read that stupid Goodnight Moon book.

Now I know why I don’t ever remember reading this book as a child.  But somehow the distributors of this weird little tome (HarperFestival, A Division of HarperCollins Publishers) have convinced us all that this is our favorite book.  They’ve even printed “Everyone’s favorite bedtime book” on the back cover.  Who exactly is everyone??  Apparently there is no government agency monitoring the claims being printed on kiddie books.  We somehow own 4 copies of this book.  We will be giving these out to trick-or-treaters along with Pat the Bunny.

So in the spirit of always offering a solution when pointing out a problem, I am in the process of writing a new version of Goodnight Moon for Baby Jacob.

Here’s what I have so far:

Goodnight sleep dress, Goodnight living room toy mess.

Goodnight Baby Einstein, Goodnight Senator Feinstein.

Goodnight nuk nuk, Goodnight dumb Goodnight Moon book.

Jacob in his sleep dress.