We listened to Goodnight Moon at toddler storytime this morning.  Our PlaySpace program will highlight the book this Thursday morning at 10:00.  Children ages 2 & 3 are welcome to join us in our great green room.  (The meeting room will be transformed to resemble the room in the book, and activities will relate to the story.)

The concept is very simple:  show the objects in a room and say goodnight to each one.
“In the great green room
There was a telephone
And a red balloon
And a picture of – ”

At first we see closeups of the room, and the objects in the room, until we get to the page where we begin to say goodnight.  Then we see the whole room for the first time. (We see a picture on the wall which is an illustration from The Runaway Bunny – published 5 years earlier.)  Next we say, “Goodnight Moon”, even though we hadn’t talked about the moon earlier.  The room begins to grow dark.  The little bunny looks at the bears in chairs as we say goodnight to them, and he continues looking around.  It’s not until we say goodnight to the old lady whispering hush that we see the bunny is all tucked in.  You can be all tucked in when you say goodnight to the stars and the air.  Finally we say, “Goodnight noises everywhere.”  The room is dark.  The bunny is asleep in bed.  The kittens are asleep on the rocking chair.  The old lady is no longer in the room.  Only the mouse is still awake looking out at the moon.

To find more toddler books, search the blog by choosing the Books for Toddlers subject heading at the top of this post.

~Maureen