The book ends with the cryptic question: 'How many stripes on a bumble bee?' The drawing of the bee is deliberately vague, leaving the stripes uncountable, and echoing the Jamesian sense of foggy paranoia that has been the hallmark of the book. The Child's car won't go very far but, presumably, Daddy's car (or Daddy himself) will-and we will see this borne out near the end, when Daddy leaves the family. On the previous page, the teddy bear has been identified with the Child. The Child's car 'won't go very far.' The reason for this is obvious when we glance at the illustration-the Child is attempting to run over his teddy bear. Later, the Child plays with his toy car, while Daddy (far away and with his back turned) works on his car. We turn the page to see Mother and Child sitting in silence on opposite ends of the room, staring at the fire in grim silence. The book opens with the introduction of Mother's cryptic book, the contents of which the child is forbidden from beholding (we later observe over Mother's shoulder that it is filled with blank pages). The vast distances between characters (whose eyes never meet except for in one poignant dream sequence), the unspoken tension between the two parents, Mother sleeping alone, Daddy's final departure to the city, and the boy being equated with a toy all add up to trouble in paradise-something is deeply not right in the Rabbit home. Just reread 'My World,' the sequel to 'Goodnight Moon.' It really is the disturbing, domestic psychodrama I remembered. Margaret saw herself as something else - a writer of songs and nonsense. They say she was a creative genius who made a room come to life with her excitement. Margaret died after surgery for a bursting appendix while in France. The puppies had licked all the paint off the paper.

When he woke up, the papers he painted on were bare. The illustrator painted many pictures one day and then fell asleep. One time she gave two puppies to someone who was going to draw a book with that kind of dog. She also taught illustrators to draw the way a child saw things. She tried to write the way children wanted to hear a story, which often isn't the same way an adult would tell a story. She said she dreamed stories and then had to write them down in the morning before she forgot them.

There are many scraps of paper where she quickly wrote down a story idea or a poem. She thought this made children think harder when they are reading. Sometimes she would put a hard word into the story or poem. She liked to write books that had a rhythm to them. Most of her books have animals as characters in the story. Even though she died nearly 70 years ago, her books still sell very well. Margaret Wise Brown wrote hundreds of books and stories during her life, but she is best known for Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny.

Good night moon by m wise brown