goodnight baby x

the husband and baby x have a very well developed bedtime routine.  each night, the husband and baby x select two books, which the husband reads aloud while holding the books with one hand and baby x with the other.  once the books are finished, the husband recites 'goodnight moon', from memory, always ending with 'goodnight baby x'.

the baron isn't sure - or can't remember - why 'goodnight moon' is the book that is repeated night after night.  it's short and rhyme-y, certainly, which gives the book an easy-to-memorize quality.  but then, so is 'i love you, goodnight', another book in baby x's library.  'goodnight moon' is not even the most delightful of baby x's 'please, please go to sleep now' books (the baron favors 'guess how much i love you', which is so lovely to look at and to read that her heart breaks a little every time she finishes it).

there is something charming, and kooky, and amazingly clever, about 'goodnight moon' though, something the baron only figured out after reading the book a countless number of times. once she spotted it, 'goodnight moon' really started to grow on her.

it's that, in 'goodnight moon', margaret wise brown is self-referential, ridiculously so.  'goodnight moon' and another of her books, 'the runaway bunny' (also lovely in a makes-the-baron-cry-every-time kind of way), are all over 'goodnight moon'.

to wit:

the book on the little boy bunny's bedside table?  'goodnight moon'.

the only book on the bookcase with a readable spine?  'the runaway bunny'.

the painting on the wall behind the quiet old lady whispering hush?  an image from 'the runaway bunny' (it's the scene where the mommy bunny fishes for the baby bunny.  no, really, fishing, like in a stream, with a carrot as bait).

the quiet old lady whispering hush?  the mommy bunny from 'the runaway bunny'!

the little boy bunny in bed, to whom 'goodnight moon' is read?  the runaway bunny from 'the runaway bunny'!

it's all very cute and very meta, but here's the thing: these hidden asides aren't immediately obvious - at least they weren't to the baron - and that makes the baron love them even more.  they're super-secret jokes, put in by author and illustrator, for reasons hard to immediately discern.  no doubt, with a little help from her friend google, the baron could learn all about 'goodnight moon', for the gentle winks contained within it have no doubt been cataloged by someone, somewhere on the interweb.

but, reader?  the baron probably won't bother with trying to find out the whys and whens and how-many-other-times about 'goodnight moon'.  it's kind of delightful enough, just the way it is.