Goodnight Goon: A Petrifying Parody

by Michael Rex (Illustrator)

Overview

Goodnight monsters everywhere, in this parody romp with its own special twist!

?Goodnight tomb. Goodnight goon. Goodnight Martians taking over the moon.?

It?s bedtime in the cold gray tomb with a black lagoon, and two slimy claws, and a couple of jaws, and a skull and a shoe and a pot full of goo. But as a little werewolf settles down, in comes the Goon determined at all costs to run amok and not let any monster have his rest.

A beloved classic gets a kind-hearted send up in this utterly monsterized parody; energetic art and a hilarious text will have kids begging to read this again and again.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780399245343
Publisher:	Penguin Young Readers Group
Publication date:	08/14/2008
Pages:	32
Sales rank:	319,770
Product dimensions:	10.18(w) x 8.72(h) x 0.38(d)
Lexile:	AD300L (what's this?)
Age Range:	6 - 8 Years

About the Author

Michael Rex lives in the Bronx, New York.

Editorial Reviews

Gr 1-3

Imitation can indeed be sincere flattery, as Rex proves in his slightly eerie reworking of Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd's classic bedtime tale. The young bunny has been replaced by a little monster, but he still wears striped pajamas as he lies in his bed and says good night to his surroundings. "In the cold gray tomb/There was a gravestone/And a black lagoon/And a picture of-Martians taking over the moon." The parody is clever, matching original verse with rhymes that seem unforced and appropriate for the new setting: "Goodnight skull/And goodnight shoe/Goodnight creature/Goodnight goo/And goodnight to the old werewolf hollering 'Boo.'" Rex's color drawings create a monster child's bedroom filled with the same late-evening light of Hurd's illustrations. The book ends on the same peaceful note as the original. A clever offering just right for graduates of bedtimes with Goodnight Moon .-Kathleen Whalin, York Public Library, ME

School Library Journal

"In the cold gray tomb / There was a gravestone / And a black lagoon / And a picture of- / Martians taking over the moon," begins this snort-inducing parody of one of children's literature's most sacred texts. Rex replicates the scansion and composition to a T, placing a befanged young werewolf in a green-blanketed bed under a picture of "three little mummies rubbing their tummies" and watched over by "a hairy old werewolf who was hollering 'Boo.' " It's something of a one-joke wonder, but what fun it is, as the goon wreaks a little havoc before being ordered under the bed by the stern little werewolf: "Goodnight monsters everywhere." (Picture book. 7 & up)

Kirkus Reviews

"A clever offering just right for graduates of bedtimes with Goodnight Moon." —School Library Journal

"[A] snort-inducing parody of one of children's literature's most sacred texts . . . . [W]hat fun it is." —Kirkus Reviews

"[A] lot of fun, and it may inspire kidsto come up with their own retellings of other familiar classics." —The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

From the Publisher