Posted on 01/07/2017 6:11:05 PM PST by heterosupremacist
“In the great green room/there was a telephone/and a red balloon/and a picture of a cow jumping over the moon . . .”cow jumping over the moon . . .”
For childhood readers of the classic “Goodnight Moon,” there is no more nostalgic image. The simple, rhythmic language and the bold drawings captured the hearts and minds of the public when “Goodnight Moon” was published in 1947. It has sold over 14 million copies and is one of the most beloved children’s books of all time.
But it’s likely few could even name the book’s author, let alone know her wild backstory.
She was a hyper-prolific writer who changed the face of modern picture books; a children’s book author who didn’t particularly like children; an avid rabbit hunter who penned the classic story “The Runaway Bunny”; a great beauty who never married but flitted from relationship to relationship with men and at least one woman.
Margaret Wise Brown is the deserving subject of a new biography “In the Great Green Room” by Amy Gary, a Brown-obsessive, who unearthed a treasure trove of her unpublished works, diaries and letters and has devoted her career to continuing Brown’s.
Born in Brooklyn in 1910 and raised on Long Island, Brown came from wealthy but distracted parents who bickered and largely ignored their three children. Brown spent her youth in boarding schools, holding on to a vague aspiration to become America’s next great novelist.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
There is also a modern version out called “Goodnight iPad”.
All I remember was turning the page to find the mouse in the next illustration.
“If You Give a Moose a Muffin...”
... he won’t bite your sister!
So what if she was a lesbian radical?
If you enjoy the children's stories, great.
Dr. Seuss apparently didn't like kids, either, and had none of his own.
He was a big pinko to boot.
I still read his stories to my son.
Yes, the Post's title is clickbait. There is nothing in the article to support the idea that Brown "hated" children.
You're right --not particularly liking kids does not equal hating them. I'm not fond of other people's children. But I don't hate them (well, there might be a few obnoxious whippersnappers I've hated).
For my own children, thank God the maternal hormones kicked in as designed. And I loved reading "Goodnight Moon" to them when they were small.
You like kids just fine, I have three and I love them but I hate when they are moody, annoying or irritating too. Its ok to not like the annoying aspect of kids, but find joy in the good things about them.
If you truly did not like kids, you would be spreading common core or funding planned parenthood. :)
As for this story, I don’t believe she hated kids, maybe she wasn’t cut out to raise kids but maybe she had a soft spot for them because she was ignored in childhood... seriously, why write a pleasant kids book if you hated kids? Who would do that??
I’ve never heard of the McGuffey Readers, so checked them out online. They are still used home schooling. I grew up in Rochester, NY, and the school system there used the Dick and Jane series and workbooks for reading skills. I was lucky as my mother used to read to me before I even started school, and by the time I started Kindergarten in 1952, I was already reading on my own. I read to both my sons when they were little too.
Oscar Wilde wrote beautiful and sweet children’s books. He was morally depraved and irresponsible. He was also a believing Christian who received the sacraments on his deathbed. We cannot judge people’s hearts, souls or intellects by broad labels.
Obviously you missed the Oval-tine message.
Oscar Wilde wrote beautiful and sweet children’s books. He was morally depraved and irresponsible.
He was also a degenerate homosexual who was sentenced to hard labor in Prison ~
Wilde had the Marquess of Queensberry prosecuted for criminal libel. The Marquess was the father of Wilde’s lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. The charge carried a penalty of up to two years in prison.
The trial unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and trial for gross indecency with men. After two more trials he was convicted and imprisoned for two years’ hard labour. HA!
She wrote some freaky weird kids’ books. I have some of them. One is sweet, with the coolest 1930s drawings, with animals going to sleep, and airplanes in their hangars going to sleep.
The best one we have is the Fur Book. About 2 inches small, and covered in grey soft fur. It’s about a fur family, and it reads like she was on opium, very weird, some grammar errors, making very little sense, with freaky pictures of the tiny fur family. It’s like an acid trip for four year olds. Somehow I treasure it because it is so different.
The most subversive Children’s book is “The Rainbow Fish”. It indoctrinates children into accepting Socialism.
No one will play with the little rainbow fish because he has beautiful rainbow scales. They’re jealous. So he goes to a wise old octopus or someone who tells him to just rip off his beautiful scales and share them with all the other little fish til each have only one rainbow scale. Then all are happy.
WORST SUBVERSIVE KIDS BOOK EVER.
There is another parody book called Go The F*** To Sleep. Also very funny and parents can’t not laugh.
Yes, though Dr. Seuss and I wouldn’t agree politically, his stories are an essential part of childhood, me and my kids. Yertle the Turtle was about freedom and tyranny. And The Sneeches was about racism, and being fooled by social trends. Good stuff.
“And the turtles? Now all the turtles are free.
As turtles, and, maybe, all creatures should be.”
I listened enviously for years at parents' back-to-school nights and block parties to tales of newborns who slept continuously for 8, 9, 10, hours within just a few weeks of coming home from the hospital. Meanwhile, none of our three slept more than two -- or if we were very lucky -- two and a half hours at a time, and none of them typically would go back to sleep after being fed or read to for at least 30 minutes until they were well into their two's.
Finally, after about eight years, we had the opportunity to sleep through the night.
Alas! by then we were both so thoroughly trained that any sound louder than five decibels anywhere in the house would send us bolting across the hall...
Anyway, these parodies have given me, father of three who roared up the bypass to the hospital at a hundred miles an hour in a minivan, one hand on the wheel while all the small bones of the other were being crushed to powder by a hysterical screaming woman the idea for a parody book of my own. It may just may kill the market for these other parodists -- and the serious books they're lampooning.
My working title: It's Going to Hurt Like Passing a Kidney Stone The Size of a Bowling Ball and the Stupid G*ddamn Breathing Exercises Are Not Going to Do a Bit of Good.
I like it!!! Go with it!!!
My first three babies loved sleep. So even if I had to get up and feed them at night, they’d nap a lot and sleep late and so I never felt too deprived. The fourth though?? She slept barely 8 hours in the 24! What?! So I was sleep deprived until she was 18 months old and finally seemed to need more sleep. Insane.
She looks fairly hot to me
Born in '59, but also loved that story.
Regards,
I read Goodnight, Moon to my kids 10-15 years ago when they were younger but I don’t recall ever hearing of it before then. I loved the Babar books when I was young as well as a book called Caps for Sale. These were still in print when my kids were little and I enjoyed reading these books to them.
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