By Margaret Wise Brown
The great green room where a little bunny says goodnight to every last thing in sight — the original wind-down book, whispered in millions of houses for nearly eighty years.
In a great green room, a little bunny is tucked into bed and, instead of going to sleep, starts saying goodnight to everything. Goodnight to the moon in the window, to the red balloon, to the cow jumping over the moon in the picture, to the mittens and the socks and the little mouse that's hiding on a different page each time. The room dims a little with every spread, the light going amber and low, until there's almost nothing left to say goodnight to but the air itself. Nothing happens, and that is the whole point. It's the sound of a room settling for the night.
This is the original bedtime book, the one that basically invented the wind-down, and it works on the very youngest children because it isn't a story so much as a ritual. Saying goodnight to each thing in turn gives a child a way to close the day down object by object, and the pictures dimming as you read pulls them toward sleep whether they meant to go or not. It has been read at bedtime for nearly eighty years, so giving it at a shower is handing a family a book the grandparents will know by heart too. Chances are it becomes the last book of the night, the one that means it's really time now.