In the great green room
There was a telephone
And a red balloon
And a picture of—
The opening lines establish the setting, allowing the child being read to a chance to easily picture in the mind what it looks like. The use of green and red as colors appeals subtly appeals the love of many children for the Christmas season. The telephone today may present problems as the phone actually picture looks nothing at all like most cell phones which kids who will enjoy this book are likely to be familiar with. The first page also ends with a cliffhanger—one that is fortunately addressed on the next page—which also the book to teach children about the literary use of mystery and suspense.
The cow jumping over the moon.
And just like that the suspense ends and the mystery is solved. The mystery turns out to be an image with which many children will also already be familiar from the nursery rhyme. This is an important element of the book; the way that it seeks to build upon knowledge already attained. The most effective manner of building up previously attained knowledge is repetition.
Goodnight cow jumping over the moon
Goodnight light
And the red balloon
Here is an example of repetition. The narrator bids goodnight to the cow, allowing for the phrase to be repeated. Then then the introduction of something new: the light. Then another repetition that reminds the child of the red balloon in the room.
And two little kittens
And a pair of mittens
And a little toy house
And a young mouse
And a comb and a brush and a bowl full of mush
And a quiet old lady who was whispering “hush”
An interesting choice by the author is neither to compose the entire story in rhyme—ala Dr. Seuss, for instance—nor to compose completely in unrhymed verse. Instead, the author mixes things up a bit. This is an effective device for keeping the interest of the child in the story. At an early age, the overuse of rhyme can sometimes have the effect of overwhelming the unformed mind and taking them out of the story—which is why so many bedtime stories constructed in this manner. The rhythm of the rhyme can often produce a tranquilizing effect on a listener. What is odd, of course, is that Goodnight, Moon has become a traditional bedtime story even though the author decisively chose not to pursue the path of rhyme as a narcotic.
Goodnight, nobody.
Every page in the book except two feature some kind of illustration. The opening lines are set across an illustration of the entire room that features the mentioned item. A page with the lines “And goodnight mouse” features the tiniest image—that of the mouse—but still features an illustration. Only “Goodnight, nobody” is a page containing nothing but words. The use of a non-illustrated blank page in the middle of a book is rare enough, but one in such a short book otherwise adorned with either black and white or vividly colored imagery is rarer still. Some parents, preferring not to say goodnight nobody have chosen to allow their child to draw their own addition to the list of whom they would like to say goodnight to. Still other parents have taken images from other books or magazines and pasted them onto the blank page. The choice of a blank page thus seems to have been perhaps more creative than if the author had made a choice herself.
