{"id":9030,"date":"2020-09-10T13:50:59","date_gmt":"2020-09-10T17:50:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/?p=9030"},"modified":"2020-09-10T13:50:59","modified_gmt":"2020-09-10T17:50:59","slug":"how-one-librarian-tried-to-squash-goodnight-moon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/how-one-librarian-tried-to-squash-goodnight-moon\/","title":{"rendered":"How One Librarian Tried to Squash “Goodnight Moon”"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s a reason this classic is missing from the New York Public Library\u2019s list of the 10 most-checked-out books of all time.<\/h3>\n

By Dan Kois<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Anne

Anne Carroll Moore was appointed New York Public Library’s first “superintendent of work with children” in 1906.<\/p><\/div>\n

On Monday, January 13, 2020, the New York Public Library, celebrating its 125th anniversary, released a list of the 10 most-checked-out books in the library\u2019s history. The list is headed by a children\u2019s book\u2014Ezra Jack Keats\u2019 masterpiece The Snowy Day<\/em>\u2014and includes five other kids\u2019 books. The list also includes a surprising addendum: One of the most beloved children\u2019s books of all time didn\u2019t make the list because for 25 years it was essentially banned from the New York Public Library. Goodnight Moon<\/em>, by Margaret Wise Brown, would have made the Top 10 list and might have topped it, the library notes, but for the fact that \u201cinfluential New York Public library children\u2019s librarian Anne Carroll Moore disliked the story so much when it was published in 1947 that the library didn\u2019t carry it \u2026 until 1972.\u201d Who was Anne Carroll Moore, and what was her problem with the great Goodnight Moon<\/em>?<\/p>\n

As it turns out, this footnote on the NYPL\u2019s anniversary list hints at a rich, surprising story of power, taste, educational philosophy, and the crumbling of traditional gatekeepers. Moore was appointed the NYPL\u2019s first \u201csuperintendent of work with children\u201d in 1906, at a time when the very idea of children even being allowed into libraries was brand-new. (Children who couldn\u2019t read yet would gain nothing from a library, the theory went, and older children might be corrupted by all the trashy adult books.) Moore oversaw the beautiful Central Children\u2019s Room in the library\u2019s flagship building on Fifth Avenue. As Leonard S. Marcus writes in his biography of Margaret Wise Brown, Moore became perhaps the leading figure in popular children\u2019s books in the first half of the century, and many of her methods seem strikingly modern. She scheduled scores of story hours for children; she encouraged any children who could sign their names to check out a book; she trained librarians drawn from a diverse range of backgrounds and then sent them out into a city of immigrant children, preaching the gospel of reading.<\/p>\n

She was also a tastemaker whose NYPL-branded lists of recommended children\u2019s books could make or break a book\u2019s fortunes. \u201cOther libraries around the country looked to the NYPL, and if she didn\u2019t buy it, they didn\u2019t buy it,\u201d explains Betsy Bird, a children\u2019s book blogger and longtime NYPL librarian who\u2019s now at the Evanston Public Library in Illinois. \u201cIf Anne Carroll Moore didn\u2019t like a book, she could effectively kill it.\u201d Marcus writes that \u201ceditors, authors, and illustrators routinely stopped by to visit with Miss Moore and seek her counsel on their works in progress\u201d; she supposedly had a custom-made rubber stamp reading \u201cNOT RECOMMENDED FOR PURCHASE BY EXPERT,\u201d and she was not afraid to use it.<\/p>\n

But Miss Moore\u2019s taste was particular. She loved Beatrix Potter and The Velveteen Rabbit and was a steadfast believer in the role of magic and innocence in children\u2019s storytelling. This put her in opposition to a progressive wave then sweeping children\u2019s literature, inspired by the early childhood research of the Cooperative School for Student Teachers, located on Bank Street in Greenwich Village. The Bank Street School, as it became known, was also a preschool and the teacher training facility where Margaret Wise Brown enrolled in 1935. This progressive wave was exemplified by the Here and Now Story Book, created by Bank Street\u2019s leading light Lucy Sprague Mitchell in 1921. A collection of simple tales set in a city, focusing on skyscrapers and streetcars, it was a rebuttal to Moore\u2019s \u201conce upon a time\u201d taste in children\u2019s lit.<\/p>\n

Anne Carroll Moore was not a fan of Margaret Wise Brown\u2019s work. Brown, with her Bank Street training, was \u201clooking at the mind of a child, operating at the level that a child understands,\u201d says Bird. \u201cShe was trying to get down on their level, whereas Anne Carroll Moore placed herself above the children\u2019s level, handing what she viewed as the best of the best down to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"margaret

Margaret Wise Brown<\/p><\/div>\n

By the time Brown\u2019s most famous book was published in 1947, Moore had ostensibly retired, though\u2014as Jill Lepore noted in the New Yorker in a story about Moore\u2019s war with another children\u2019s classic, Stuart Little\u2014she still essentially ran the children\u2019s section, leading department meetings even when her put-upon acolyte and successor, Frances Clarke Sayers, tried changing the meeting room at the last minute. Margaret Wise Brown wanted librarians to adopt Goodnight Moon; she even blurred out the udder of the cow who jumped over the moon to avoid offending those \u201cImportant Ladies.\u201d But it certainly wasn\u2019t enough for Moore, or Sayers, or the NYPL: Marcus notes that \u201cin a harshly worded internal review, the library dismissed the book as an unbearably sentimental piece of work.\u201d And so the book wasn\u2019t purchased by the New York Public Library, and while children were encouraged to check out all kinds of books from the library\u2019s extensive children\u2019s department, Goodnight Moon<\/em> was not one of them.<\/p>\n

As Bird notes in a fascinating blog post, the legacy of Anne Carroll Moore is one that many children\u2019s librarians struggle with. \u201cShe is the quintessential bun-in-the-hair shushing librarian,\u201d says Bird. \u201cShe\u2019s such an easy villain.\u201d Her discriminating book recommendations delivered from on high represent the exact opposite of the credo pledged by most children\u2019s librarians today: that the library\u2019s role is to provide the widest possible array of titles and allow children to find the books they love. Yet Moore did more than anyone else in the first half of the 20th century to encourage children of all races and incomes to read. To adopt a 21st-century rallying cry, Bird notes, Anne Carroll Moore \u201cwas all about diverse books waaaaaay before anyone else was.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"GoodnightPerhaps in part because of Moore\u2019s blacklisting, Goodnight Moon<\/em> wasn\u2019t an immediate commercial success; by 1951 sales had dropped low enough that the publisher was considering putting it out of print. So no one was pressuring the NYPL to stock the book, least of all Brown, who died in 1952. (Recovering from surgery for an ovarian cyst in a hospital in France, she playfully kicked her leg up, cancan-style, to show a nurse how well she was feeling; the action dislodged an embolism from a vein in her leg, which traveled to her brain, killing her nearly instantly.) The book regained popularity in the 1950s and 1960s as chains like Waldenbooks and B. Dalton grew; soon, libraries ceded their position as the primary buyers of children\u2019s books to parents. By 1972, the book\u2019s 25th anniversary, Goodnight Moon<\/em> was nearing 100,000 copies sold a year. Perhaps it was that anniversary, speculated the NYPL\u2019s Lynn Lobash, that spurred the library finally to stock the book.<\/p>\n

Since 1972, Goodnight Moon<\/em> has been checked out about 100,000 times from New York City libraries, placing it somewhat below the No. 10 book on the list, The Very Hungry Caterpillar. But, says the NYPL, it\u2019s rising fast. No doubt at the library\u2019s 150th anniversary, Goodnight Moon<\/em> will have surpassed some of the more dated titles on the list, like How to Win Friends and Influence People. Sorry, Anne Carroll Moore. Margaret Wise Brown won this round.<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared in Slate <\/em>magazine (Jan. 31, 2020) and is used with permission. \u00a92020 The Slate Group LLC.<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"divider\"<\/p>\n

Margaret Wise Brown Prize Celebrates Fifth Year<\/h4>\n

\"MWB<\/p>\n

Each year, Hollins invites nominations for the prize from children\u2019s book publishers from across the country and around the world. A three-judge panel consisting of established picture book authors reviews the nominations and chooses a winner.<\/p>\n

Hollins established the Margaret Wise Brown Prize in Children\u2019s Literature as a way to pay tribute to one of its best-known alumnae and one of America\u2019s most beloved children\u2019s authors. The cash prizes are made possible by an endowed fund created by James Rockefeller, Brown\u2019s fianc\u00e9 at the time of her death.<\/p>\n

The engraved medal presented to the winners was conceived by award-winning sculptor and painter Betty Branch \u201979, M.A.L.S. \u201987.<\/p>\n

Margaret Wise Brown graduated from Hollins in 1932 and went on to write Goodnight Moon<\/em>, The Runaway Bunny<\/em>, and other children\u2019s classics before she died in 1952.<\/p>\n

\n

2020\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0 Wendy Meddour won for Lubna and Pebble<\/em>, illustrated by Daniel Egn\u00e9us and published by Dial Books.<\/p>\n

\n

2019<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 John Sullivan won for his debut children\u2019s book, Kitten and the Night Watchman<\/em>, illustrated by Taeeun Yoo and published by Simon & Schuster.<\/p>\n

\n

2018<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Elaine Magliaro won for her debut children\u2019s book, Things to Do<\/em>, illustrated by Catia Chen and published by Chronicle Books.<\/p>\n

\n

2017<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Adam Rex won for School\u2019s First Day of School<\/em>, illustrated by Christian Robinson and published by Roaring Brook Press.<\/p>\n

\n

2016<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Phil Bildner, the author of more than 20 children\u2019s books, won for Marvelous Cornelius<\/em>, illustrated by John Parra and published by Chronicle Books.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s a reason this classic is missing from the New York Public Library\u2019s list of the 10 most-checked-out books of all time. By Dan Kois On Monday, January 13, 2020, the New York Public Library, celebrating its 125th anniversary, released […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9161,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[79],"class_list":["post-9030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-summer-2020"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9030"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9030\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9041,"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9030\/revisions\/9041"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}