In the Great Green Room

If you don't recognize the phrase In the great green room, it's likely that you haven't raised kids or put kids to bed in the past 40 or 50 years. Goodnight Moon, Margaret Wise Brown's most famous book, was a staple in my house, something that was read multiple times nearly every night when my eldest was a toddler and regularly, although not quite as often, when my other kids were toddlers. Back then, I had the whole book memorized. It was a great book for making the transition from daytime to night.

In November, I read a novel called Goodnight June by Sarah Jio. It was a fictionalized account of what inspired Brown to write Goodnight Moon. After reading Goodnight June, I did a little research on Margaret Wise Brown and learned that her latest biography was the one I'm writing about today, In the Great Green Room:The Brilliant and Bold Life of Margaret Wise Brown by Amy Gary.

I was on the fence about Goodnight June and likewise, I'm on the fence with In the Great Green Room. Not that the short life of Brown isn't interesting. It most certainly is as she did live both a brilliant and bold life.

Brown was born into a family of privilege to parents who didn't really like each other. Those two things probably set her on a path for a lifestyle outside the norms of the day.

(What I didn't understand - and have come across this in other books mostly covering the same time period - when we're told Margaret had limited means, she's still buying multiple houses, renting places to live and/or write, doing all sorts of traveling, employing a valet, among other things. To me that just doesn't jive with being of limited means.)

Brown was a very prolific children's writer. She wrote for several publishing companies, including Golden which probably had the widest distribution network at the time or maybe even ever for children's literature. I was particularly interested in the huge role Brown had in the development of children's literature as we know it today. Towards the end of her life, she had tie-ins to movies and music. (Plus who knew that Rube Goldberg was a great writer of music? Not me. To me he was a simple machines science guy.) She designed novelty books. Are you familiar with Pat the Bunny?

Gary, with a history in publishing, years after Brown's death reach out to Brown's sister, Roberta, since she wanted to republish 4 of Brown's earlier books. In a matter of fact way, not expecting much of a response, Gary asked Roberta if she knew if Margaret had left behind any unpublished works. Roberta brought down a trunk for Gary to look thru and that started 25 years of Gary researching the live and works of Margaret Wise Brown. In the Great Green Room is the culmination of those 25 years' work.

The book goes into great detail about Brown's involvement in the development of texts for children. Not only her literature and the literature of others that grew out of work. But her early work with Bank Street which evolved into creation of textbooks for children based on what children like and how they would best understand material. I loved reading about Margaret's work with her illustrators as I've always found the connection between authors and illustrators really interesting. I was also interested in her interactions with the publishers regarding payment, contracts, royalties, commitments, although a little less detail and a little less repetition of some of the details would have been fine with me.

The book also goes into great detail about Brown's love life. Overall, it was fascinating. She made quite a few poor choices along the way. But some of the minutiae of her romantic affairs got tiresome.

The biography was a quick read, but I think I would have enjoyed it more had there been fewer details where they weren't needed and an inclusion of direct results of Gary's research (quotes from diaries, letters and interviews) rather than just being straight narrative.

Margaret wanted to be remembered as a "writer of songs and nonsense," which until I read that about her, I would have had no clue. She always felt like she was somehow "less" because she wrote for children. I can understand that since children's literature wasn't really a thing back in the 30s and 40s when she was writing away. Eventually she came to appreciate her talents and skills and she seemed happiest at the time of her death. How often does that happen?

Upon finishing the book, I did want to rush back to my computer and pound out a few picture books of my own. (I have one completed draft of a middle grade picture book about the Spanish American War that I worked on with my daughter.) Instead, for now, I'll stick to blogging.

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.