What Inspired Margaret Wise Brown to write Goodnight Moon?

"In the great green room. There was a telephone. And a red balloon."

Many nights of my young motherhood started with those words. "In the great green room..." Goodnight Moon, the children's classic by Margaret Wise Brown, was a favorite of my two older children and myself. I'm pretty certain that we had the whole book memorized. What a fun book.

So... when I was up in New York, struggling to read, I thought an epistolary novel (one written in the form of letters) would be easy to read, if I could find the right novel. Stumbled across Sarah Jio's "what if" novel, Goodnight June.  In Goodnight June,  30-something June, a ruthless banker, inherits her great aunt's failing Seattle bookstore. She finds a pair of letters between her great aunt and Margaret Wise Brown that leads her on a scavenger hunt to find more letters and to discover the relationship between the two women.

The premise of the book was cute. The execution, not so much so. I thought I'd learn more about Margaret Wise Brown. For that, I think I need to read a biography of her (the most recent one is titled The Great Green Room by Amy Gary). There is some information available on the internet, none of which contradicts any of what I read about in Goodnight June. 

I'm not a fan of romance novels, but I am a fan of book stores, especially small independent book stores, and I think that's what kept me reading Goodnight June until the end. The story was fairly predictable, much of it was extremely sappy, even more of it was unrealistic, but there were several surprises thrown in. (One surprise was the fact that Jio throws in mention of real life people - like Bill and Melinda Gates coming to her book store fundraiser. I wonder how Bill and Melinda feel about that. It really didn't seem necessary. Didn't add anything at all to the story.)

You might enjoy this book if you enjoy sappy romances. The letters in the story didn't live up to my standard. They weren't really the a large part of the writing, simply a large part of moving the plot forward. Don't expect to learn too much about Margaret Wise Brown. It will leave you with more questions than answers. I really can't give this any sort of hearty recommendation.