Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

A momma friend asked recently, ‘Is anyone else tired of Goodnight Moon? What else is there?’ Goodnight Moon is certainly a perfect little poem of goodnight farewells, but there is life beyond Margaret Wise Brown, the empress of books for toddlers. Here are some wonderful alternatives to the classic Goodnight Moon, a handful of bedtime beauties. (And, by all means, folks, pretty please send comments and tell us what your bed-time favorites are).

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My friends — including my partner-in-crime here, Eisha — have informed me that I tend to speak in hyperbole (which is oh-so phenomenally and just categorically untrue). But with my abuse of hyperbole aside, I have to say that Sonya Hartnett, one of my favorite writers, is brilliant. Really, people. Just flat-out brilliant. Her writing is precise, exacting. It’s economical yet truly evocative. The reason she has quite a few one-sentence paragraphs is ’cause she writes like this: “My mother’s world had contracted like a dying spider.” There. She nailed it. What else do you need?

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Dorothy Allison once wrote, “Two or three things I know for sure, and one is that I would rather go naked than wear the coat the world has made for me.” These sage words are ones that I think Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love (2006), would appreciate.

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