Goodnight Moon and Self-Referential Children's Books
Goodnight Moon is a classic American children's book written by Margaret Wise Brown. The book begins by identifying several objects in the child's room:
In the great green room
There was a telephone
and a red balloon.
And a picture of a cow jumping over the moon...
After identifying various objects, the remainder of the book has the child saying good night to these (and other) objects, the first goodnights going to the moon and the cow jumping over the moon. After each page, the room gets darker, the fire dims, the lights come on in the toy house, and the various inhabitants (cats, mice, etc.) get ready for bed. The prose reads like a lullaby. Probably one of the best children's book for kids under 5.
What's interesting about the illustrations is the many self-referential themes scattered throughout the book. I've found three such symbols:
- The one I first noticed is that one picture in the room, which is not mentioned in the opening, depicts a scene from another one of Margaret Wise Brown's children's books, The Runaway Bunny. There's also a copy of this book on the bookshelf.
- On the child's nightstand is a copy of the book Goodnight Moon. (And supposedly that book has a page showing the same room and in the room on that page there's a nightstand with a copy of Goodnight Moon on it.)
- The two pictures in the room that are identified are "the cow jumping over the moon" and "three little bears sitting on chairs." Look closely at the bears picture. In the room where they're sitting there's a picture on the wall... of a cow jumping over the moon.
Interesting.