Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd is one of my favorite books of all time. I first read it when I was in college, but it was a toddler favorite of both of our sons, and it rapidly became one of mine, too. Reading it to them at bedtime helped calm them down and put them to sleep. There is from the book a feeling of safety, of warmth, coziness, and love. I may have liked reading it to them more than they liked being read to.
With our youngest off to college this fall, I wish there were some book to give them that would reproduce those good feelings of nearly 20 years ago.
::sigh::
Here’s what we have instead. Goodnight Bush.
This image is scary enough (see the bugging microphone? the burning ballot box? the tilted scales of justice? the polluting smokestacks?).
Cover of Goodnight Bush
This is the one that makes the more serious statement:
Goodnight human rights, everywhere
A story on this book at NPR was the “most e-mailed” last week.
- ‘Goodnight Bush’ closes chapter on Bush years (audio link to story, there)
- Website for the book, Goodnight Bush
- Update, August 6, 2008: I bought the book just over a week ago – it’s better than the glowing reviews say it is. It’s more incisive, better drawn, and more thought provoking that you thought possible. American President’s Blog also talks about the book. It won’t make you seep easier, but the laughs may make you live longer.
Images by Gan Golen and Erich Origen, Goodnight Bush, copyright © 2008, Little, Brown and Co.
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
[…] but not forgotten: George W. Bush Librarium From the same people who brought us Goodnight Bush, some of the attractions at the theme park that is planned for the campus of Southern Methodist […]
LikeLike
I don’t know Gombrich’s book at all, other than what I just read at your blog. Does the book lend itself to use in the classroom?
Nice post, by the way.
“Schooliness” is a potent concept.
LikeLike
Slightly off-topic, but wonder if you’ve discovered E.H. Gombrich’s A Little History of the World, a narrative world history for children I’m greatly enjoying as an adult. I wrote a bit about it here.
Interested to hear your views, if you know the book.
Enjoying your radically sane posts ;-)
LikeLike
I think it’s premature. Every parent knows the sort of antics kids can pull before they actually say goodnight.
LikeLike