When we read classic texts we undergo a series of critical evaluative functions searching for a qualitative reason to like the novel. We speak of plot, structure, characterization, theme, narrative voice, all in an attempt to appreciate the strengths and weaknesses of a piece of literature. However, this feels particularly challenging when you consider picture books, those books marry art and words to create at least a dual sensual response. If we consider that picture books are novels stripped down to their most essential elements, in the way a poem is the concentration and succinct representation of loquacious prose. Wouldn’t there create a possible link between picture books and novel length narratives?
If we consider a book for a very young reader, such as Goodnight Moon, by Margaret Wise Brown, for evaluation. We must consider that the text will not give us all of the answers to explicate the work. We must look beyond the text, to both the image and the intent of the work. In Story Robert McKee details the premise of the book must be considered, in order to see the controlling value at play. We can easily deduce that the premise is, all is right in the world, so the child can rest easy. The controlling value would be, ‘if all is settled the reader or the audience, too should be settled.’ However, the controlling value must be at war with a counter value in order to create a balanced story. In this way, we have to consider the opposite of the controlling value, the counter value. It would be something like ‘the reader/ audience can become settled through chaos.’
If we consider a book for a very young reader, such as Goodnight Moon, by Margaret Wise Brown, for evaluation. We must consider that the text will not give us all of the answers to explicate the work. We must look beyond the text, to both the image and the intent of the work. In Story Robert McKee details the premise of the book must be considered, in order to see the controlling value at play. We can easily deduce that the premise is, all is right in the world, so the child can rest easy. The controlling value would be, ‘if all is settled the reader or the audience, too should be settled.’ However, the controlling value must be at war with a counter value in order to create a balanced story. In this way, we have to consider the opposite of the controlling value, the counter value. It would be something like ‘the reader/ audience can become settled through chaos.’
Has Wise Brown done this job, at first we consider the words, “In the great green room, there was a telephone and a red balloon and a picture of—the cow jumping over the moon.” In the first few lines, we can see there is something that makes noise, something to play with, and something to look at. Then we consider the artwork, Clement Hurd, chose the most unsettling colors: red, and green. While they are mentioned in the text, an illustrator trying to settle a reader could have washed them out in watercolor or in muted tones. Hurd chose vivid primary colors. Additionally, there is a mouse depicted in the images that is not mentioned until very late in the text. He is hidden there and the child will seek him out in later images. By page turn 3, we are introduced to a problem, “two little kittens,” and a mouse in the same room. The mouse has become the thing the child roots for, simply because he is the only creature with real growth or change. By page 8 the stakes are raised, because the mouse is in the floodlighted glare of direct lamplight. The mouse will risk being over by the ‘old lady’, near the ‘mush,’ and finally looking out the window when the child is sleeping.
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The bunny-child never leaves his bed. He is secure, but the world is not secure, he is in an exciting room, with things to do. There is for this child every possible distraction and his job is to say goodnight to all the distractions in order for the controlling value to win. And of course it wins, but the temptation is there for the bunny-child, as is that of the reader/audience. In depicting this calming down moment, Brown & Hurd are showing the child that they too can rest, in their own mitten, kitten, noisy, house.
Wise Brown, creates a figural representative, the child-bunny, to represent the audience to the book, and the “old woman” to represent the reader of the book. The work lacks any real defined protagonist rather a mildly represented bunny child/ and a slightly antagonistic mouse. The mouse is only antagonistic because he never settles. Like the kittens, and the rest of the great green room.
Wise Brown, creates a figural representative, the child-bunny, to represent the audience to the book, and the “old woman” to represent the reader of the book. The work lacks any real defined protagonist rather a mildly represented bunny child/ and a slightly antagonistic mouse. The mouse is only antagonistic because he never settles. Like the kittens, and the rest of the great green room.
Wise Brown creates intertextual references to the familiar nursery rhyme Hey Diddle Diddle with the line “The Cow jumped over the Moon.” Additionally, Wise Brown reference the Goldilocks story “The Three Little Bears.” Hurd also creates several Intertextual references within this work, to their collaborative works, The Runaway Bunny, is depicted both in a framed picture, and on the bookcase, as is the nightstand self-referential copy of Goodnight Moon. Perhaps it is a nod to the industry, perhaps it is a placement of their own work as part of the collective Picture Book Industry. But to be a meaningful Intertextual element, it needs to speak to the work in a way that brings in the referential story as part of the new narrative. When we consider this, Hey Diddle Diddle is a nonsensical nursery rhyme, meant to sit on the tip of tongues to be pulled out by generations of readers to appease and awe children. Goldilocks and the Three Bears is a fable about a girl who tried to find the “right thing,” in a place she didn’t belong. The Runaway Bunny is a story about a bunny wanting to get away from his mother, who insists she will always be there for him. In Goodnight Moon the way these come together it is as if Wise Brown is saying no matter the temptation of exciting tales, you will still find a way to settle in for the night.
Goodnight Moon is a bedtime story that is quiet and lyrical, and has lulled millions of children to sleep. However, it does something that most people never consider, it presents an unreliable narrator. The narrative voice is just listing things, how can I say it is unreliable? In addition, to the juxtaposition of calming lyrical words there is the art which switches between full color and black and white. As if at every page turn the art is seeking to wake up the reader or lull them to sleep. Similarly, the work follows a repetitive form, until the jarring line “Goodnight Nobody,” set in the middle of the work without surrounding art. The narrator has switched from a crowded room, to a room of nobody. Providing a narrative similar to all the unreliable narrators, as if Wise’s authorial statement is ‘I will prove throughout the text that it is one way, but then purposely create enjambment in your thought.”
If we consider the misplacement of intent, theme, and the unreliable narrator, Goodnight Moon’s, story if expanded could create a work for an older audience that is as unsettling as Nabokov’s Lolita. Wise-Brown is showing both how things are, how they are not, and telling the audience how she is lying to them, but somehow children are still lulled to sleep by it. And parents buy it thinking it is a sweet bedtime story where their children can find the mouse.