Goodnight Moon and Gertrude Stein

November 24, 2015 3:57 PM

In the Great Green Room: This dovetailed with another observation: my students are not as puzzled by Stein as I expect them to be. Stein writes: “Glazed Glitter. Nickel, what is nickel” and my students recognize the moment of wondering. This habit of wonder is familiar in part because we have been raised on the lists of Goodnight Moon.

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posted by frumiousb (5 comments total)

I found the following on the whiteboard in our common area one morning earlier this fall:

Good night, π
Good night, e
Good night, numbers
Transcendentally

posted by Wolfdog at 4:08 PM on November 24, 2015 [8 favorites]

In the litany of Poetic Deaths: Death By Can Can is surely one of the greats.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 4:33 PM on November 24, 2015

This habit of wonder is familiar in part because we have been raised on the lists of Goodnight Moon.

My toddler daughter must have been influenced by Goodnight Moon because when it's time to stop reading books and go to bed, she says goodnight to basically everything she is aware of. "Goodnight books... goodnight daddy... goodnight doll..." and then she'll point to her face and say "goodnight nose".
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 7:13 PM on November 24, 2015 [4 favorites]

I have been going through this book with a one year old. He likes the tiny picture of the mouse. He doesn't really have language yet but he sits and slowly turns the pages and just stares at the pictures. Thanks to this article I really now can fully appreciate this little book. Thanks!
posted by njohnson23 at 7:42 PM on November 24, 2015

another observation: my students are not as puzzled by Stein as I expect them to be. Stein writes: “Glazed Glitter. Nickel, what is nickel” and my students recognize the moment of wondering. This habit of wonder is familiar in part because we have been raised on the lists of Goodnight Moon.

Speaking as a person who loves Gertrude Stein and has a bunch of her phrases roiling around in his mind like indestructible tumbleweeds caught in a dust devil, it also doesn't hurt that her writing is basically the most brilliant verbal stimming you could possibly imagine.
posted by jamjam at 8:03 PM on November 24, 2015 [2 favorites]