The school itself was a big booster of a new trend of children's literature - one that emphasized the familiar and everyday, the 'here and now.' That put her on a collision course with Margaret Wise Brown, the dynamic, iconoclastic Brooklyn-born author of 'Goodnight Moon.' A new approachīrown had worked at the Bank Street Experimental School in New York, where she had been able to observe firsthand what kids respond to. 31 piece in The New Yorker, she wasn't keen on the emerging sociological approach to children's books - the study of what kids actually like, and comprehend, at certain ages. Moore believed that children should be weaned on myths and legends, and that stories should have morals. But she ruled with an iron hand.īooks she didn't approve of actually got a rejection stamp with the words: 'Not Recommended for Purchase by Expert.' And there were a lot of books she didn't approve of - not just 'Goodnight Moon' but 'Charlotte's Web' and 'Stuart Little.' Though she had officially retired by 1947, she still held sway over the children's room when 'Goodnight Moon' came into her crosshairs. Moore, the most powerful children's librarian in the country, wasn't having any of it.Ī pioneer in her field, she did much to bring respect to children's literature. 'I think it's definitely part of some kind of modernist tradition,' said Adam Goodell, dean of the humanities at Bergen Community College. They treasure the warm, comforting ordinariness of the bedtime scene, of the baby bunny saying goodnight to the clocks and the socks, the kittens and the mittens, without knowing that this was - in its time - a sort of avant-garde experiment.

Goodnight moon anniversary