Monday 29 May 2017

Goodnight Moon theory


I have been reading Goodnight Moon almost every night for the last year and a half, so I've had some time to think about it. Goodnight Moon is the second book in a trilogy by Margaret Wise Brown, with pictures by Clement Hurd. The first book is The Runaway Bunny and the last book is the lesser-known My World. Ostensibly, because this is a trilogy, we can assume it is about the same family of bunnies.The first part of my theory is that the mother from The Runaway Bunny is the "quiet old lady whispering hush" (QOLWH) from Goodnight Moon. In the Runaway Bunny, she is neither quiet nor old, she is rather active, chasing the bunny around everywhere. We see in that book the same Cow Jumping Over the Moon painting that appears later in Goodnight Moon, albeit in a different room. In Goodnight Moon, we also see a painting that depicts the scene from the Runaway Bunny where the mother goes fishing for the bunny. (Notably, the painted version is in black and white, while the original scene in RB is in full color).I believe that the bunny from The Runaway Bunny grows up and becomes the father to the bunny from Goodnight Moon.My World, chronologically, comes between The Runaway Bunny and Goodnight Moon, and in this book we learn a lot more about the bunny from RB's life as a new father. We know this book comes before Goodnight Moon because the baby bunny still sleeps in a crib (not a bed), the fishing painting is in the dining room, and they haven't set up the child's room from Goodnight Moon yet. The QOLWH does not appear in My World because she has not moved in with her son yet.Presumably, the QOLWH moved in some time shortly after the events of My World, and she brought her Cow Jumping over the Moon painting with her. That is when they moved the Bunny into the room from Goodnight Moon, moved the paintings in there too, and the QOLWH moved into the bunny's old nursery.And one more thing:Most of The Runaway Bunny features anthropomorphic bunnies in various fantastical situations. The second-to-last situation has the Bunny being "a little boy" and the mother being his anthropomorphic mother. We see them in this scene in a house, with the cow jumping over the moon painting. In the very next scene, however, the Bunny says "shucks, I might as well stay where I am and be your little bunny" and in this scene we finally see the bunnies, not as anthropomorphic bunnies wearing human clothes and living in a house, but as actual bunnies living in a hollow under a tree. These bunnies clearly have huge imaginations, so I believe that the stories of Goodnight Moon and My World are imagine and told by these bunnies from their hollow. That's the second part of my theory.How old should I wait until my child is before I explain all of this to him?? ;) via /r/Parenting http://ift.tt/2rPsdzH

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