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Good Night, Gorilla | 
| Author: Peggy Rathmann
Publisher: Putnam Juvenile
Category: Book
List Price: $7.99
Buy Used: $0.01
You Save: $7.98 (100%)
Rating:  187 reviews
Media: Board book
Edition: Brdbk
Reading Level: Baby-Preschool
Pages: 34
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 6.5 x 5 x 0.9
ISBN: 0399230033
EAN: 9780399230035
ASIN: 0399230033
Publication Date: February 21, 1996
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews: Read 20 more reviews...
 Cute, but Overrated June 24, 2009
Rebecca (Los Angeles, CA)
this book has very nice illustrations, but there is hardly any text. my daughter likes to be read to, so this really doesn't work. i don't think it is that funny or clever.
Oh how I hate this book. June 11, 2009
Mike Smith (Albuquerque, NM)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
All right, I'm giving this two stars because my kids seem to like it, but it is, in my opinion, a thoroughly one-star-or-less book.
It is incredibly lame. The pictures are simplistic and not very well-drawn, and the story is nonsensical bordering on retarded-and-troubling.
And I can handle nonsensical, in fact I think some of the best kids books recognize the sort of bizarre dream state that childhood is and use that to tell engaging narratives that dance happily past logic and convention to make kids laugh and wonder. See for instance most of the gently hallucinogenic tightrope walk over the Gulf of Madness that is the collective canon of Margaret Wise Brown. That stuff makes NO sense--COLOR KITTENS, LITTLE FUR FAMILY, and that one about the talking island--but it's all lyrical to the point of being beautiful, and it's fun.
GOOD NIGHT, GORILLA, on the other hand...ugh...man...I really, really hate this book. Seriously. I have two young kids, and as I said, they like this for some reason and ask me to read it to them all the time.
AND IT SUUUUUUUUUUUUCKS. Oh wow does it suck.
First of all there are almost no words, so you can't just shift into autopilot and read the wretched thing without thinking. You've got to narrate the damn thing, and since its story is mindless and its pictures are unexciting, well, here ya go, have fun.
GOOD NIGHT, GORILLA tells the story of a zookeeper named Joe who goes around checking on the zoo animals in their cages and saying good night to them, while unbeknownst to his apparently deaf and blind or at least unbelievably distracted self, the gorilla has stolen his keys and is quietly unlocking all the other animals' cages: the elephant, the lion, the giraffe, the armadillo, whatever. Then, because animals all apparently live in bad existential faith and don't know what to do with their own freedom once they have it, they docilely and quietly follow the zookeeper into his house to fall asleep in the zookeeper's tiny bedroom.
There, the zookeeper and his wife--who is apparently also deaf and blind and in fact not even able to feel the vibrations of a full-grown elephant stomping in through their narrow door and into their bedroom--turn out the lights and say good night to one another.
Then, all the animals say "Good Night!" as well, one at a time, showing a really freaky dark side to the whole story. THEY'RE KEPT LOCKED IN CAGES, BUT THEY CAN TALK! They're as sentient and intellectual as humans--in fact far more so than the staggeringly ignorant humans in this story--and they're being kept in cages! This is...slavery!
This is not charming--this is demented.
Anyway, this alerts the zookeeper's wife who leads all the talking animals back to their cages as if this happens all the time, but the gorilla grabs the keys again and sneaks back into the house where they climb into bed between the zookeeper and his wife and fall asleep. Because that's all animals want, to be with people. Oh, if only all wild animals could be kept in cages and/or beds, how happy they would be! What the zookeeper and his wife will say when they find the giant sleeping gorilla between them in the morning, I don't know. Probably something along the lines of, "Oh, our lives are so terrible and we are so stupid, someone should write a book about us and illustrate it with mundane, unexciting, uninspired drawings."
In conclusion: do not order this book for your kids unless you have a nanny robot that is raising them for you, because if you're the one who reads to them, this book will do nothing but make you hate life and the act of reading aloud to your children. Your children will continually ask you to read this book to them because something in it may appeal to their young minds that don't know any better, you will read it, they will sense your reluctance, they will perceive that you think reading is unexciting, they will no doubt inherit that belief, will grow up illiterate (or just as bad, aliterate), will not be able to hold a good job as a result, will find themselves homeless during a low point in the economy, and will probably die of exposure beneath a bridge somewhere. That's how bad this book is.
And really, there are so many actually GOOD kids books out there, just don't take that chance. This book is a horrific chore, and if you can avoid it, do. There is no joy to be found here, no joy at all.
Another Favorite June 9, 2009
M. Young
This is one of my 18 month olds favorites - great illustrations. My husband loves it too (he is not a big reader) - he doesn't have to read it, but just describe what is going on in the pictures.
A Charming Choice May 24, 2009
C. Mundroff (Ellicott City, MD)
My 2 year old grandson laughed out loud when the book was read in an animated way. Delightful for me too.
Subtle and fun May 23, 2009
UCF Professor (Orlando, Florida)
From the balloon that gradually floats off toward the moon to the clock in the zookeeper's bedroom that marks the time it takes to get the animals all back into bed, there is a lot of subtle humor and fun in this book. My 2-year old can't get to sleep without it. She has learned the word "inconspicuous" in connection with the way the elephant looks before he's discovered in the bedroom. This is a special book - right up there with _Good Night Moon_.
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