Good Night, Gorilla

My grandsons love this book and so do I. The details of the book are almost magical. The animals have toys and books in their cages. The keys on the key rings match up to the colors of the cages. As the animals follow "Mr. and Mrs. Zookeeper" across the lawn the neighbors in the windows of one of the houses go from one, to two, to three. The colors are beautiful and it is an enjoyable experience for the reader no matter what his age. I am buying this book for all the special people in my life who have children, just like I do the Shel Silverstein books.

I used to read this to my preschoolers by request - it was a permanent fixture in our library and I was not allowed to swap it out for new books! My kids would look for it if I took it away and I would have to bring it back. The Gorilla lets out all the animals in the zoo and follows the zoo keeper home! Mrs zoo keeper is not amused with her roomful of animals and Mr. zoo keeper has to return all the animals to their cages.

Peggy Rathmann is a Caldecott Medal winner for "The Day the Babies Crawled Away" and "Officer Buckle and Gloria." She also illustrated the wry "Bootsie Barker Bites." The delightfully clever and colorful illustrations in her "Buenas Noches, Gorila" will appeal to children of all ages. Spare, simple text in Spanish is useful for bilingual children, as well as English-as-first-language children learning Spanish. The pictures indeed tell many words' worth of story; and invite discussion between adult reader and younger co-reader. Not just a bedtime book, "Buenas Noches, Gorila" is for quiet reading any time of day!

If you look at the title "Good Night, Gorilla" and immediately think of the classic "Good Night, Moon," you are not alone. But whereas the latter is about a little rabbit who is putting off going to sleep by saying "Good Night" to everything in the room, this little treat written and illustrated by Peggy Rathmann is about a zookeeper who WANTS to go to sleep and is saying "Good Night" to all of the animals in the zoo. What the weary zookeeper does not know, is that the gorilla has grabbed his keys and there is a growing menagerie following him home to his wife. "Good Night, Gorilla," is simply a charming little tale, where the drawings communicate much more than the dialogue. I want to think of the art as being a cross between watercolors and pastels, but then what do I know about art? What I love best is to find the mouse with the banana on the string in each picture, and I bet your children will love that too when they discover it on their own.

This is by far my favorite and my 21 month old daughter's favorite. The illustrations are amazing in their detail. I've been reading it to my daughter since she was about 8 months old, and I'm still finding fun "treasures" in the pictures - such as the people appearing in the window of the neighbor's house, the photo on the bedside table. There are so many others, but I don't want to give it away as the fun is in discovering. There is so much to this book with few words - my daughter gets different things out of it at different stages of her development. As an infant she liked the rhythmic "Goodnight Gorilla...Goodnight...Elephant, etc." and the bright colors. As she started learning animals, she loved pointing out the zoo animals. Later she was enthralled by finding the banana on every page. Lately she has been interested inthe different items in each of their cages. She was so excited the evening she realized the doll in the armadillo's cage was "Baby Ernie!". You won't be disappointed.