We are starting a new baby fad soon to be the next yummy-mummy trend to hit the coffee shops – baby led reading – aka sitting your baby in front of the bookshelves and letting them pick their own bedtime stories. We’ve been doing this for a while and one book gets chosen every night – Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Clement Hurd.

We have been alternating Goodnight Moon and Goodnight Gorilla since we started reading George bedtime stories, but he seems to have grown more attached to Goodnight Moon. He loves it. There are some nights we have to read it twice. He gets very very excited by the bowl of mush and likes to have a bit of time on each page to touch everything with one finger. Particularly the red balloon and the mouse when it appears on its own. You won’t have a clue what I’m talking about unless you’ve read this book. There’s not really a story. It’s simply a description of the ‘great green room’ and what’s inside and then you say goodnight to everything you’ve just described. For ages we have been saying goodnight to everything outside before we close the curtains so that might be part of the reason why George likes it. I think it’s more the lurid green, yellow and red illustrations alternating with monochrome pages that do it though. And the repetition.

The illustrations are not brilliant, but they obviously work. The text is a bit odd, but that obviously works too. I don’t think I would have ever picked this book up in a store, but we were given two copies and I have a feeling we’ll give both a good run. I would definitely recommend getting this book if you have a young baby. We have been reading it to George since he was a couple of months old and now at 8 months he definitely enjoys it, actually he loves it. There is something calming about reading a list of things and then saying goodnight to them one by one. I can imagine that in a year or two we will be doing this to George’s room as well before he goes to sleep.

“Goodnight light
and the red balloon

Goodnight bears
Goodnight chairs”