READ THE BOOK HERE: Goodnight Moon- Adapted for Doom

Often referred to as “the very first book to share with a child,” Margaret Wise Brown’s “Goodnight Moon” (1947) tells the story of a little bunny, who notices the many items in his room and then bids them each goodnight before going to sleep (Brown and Hurd 1947, 19). Accompanied by Clement Hurd’s beautifully simplistic illustration style, the classic bedtime story holds a special place in the hearts of many as one of the most distinctive and nostalgic children’s books of the past 74 years.   

From the day I was born until the day I decided that I would rather read on my own, my parents read me a bedtime story every single night without fail. When as a young toddler I developed a crippling fear of the dark, they began to use “Goodnight Moon,” to establish a nightly routine, where I would say goodnight to all of the items in my room that protected me before we turned off the lights. Inspired by the story’s significance in my own life and it’s usage as a tool to help me overcome my fears, I began to think to myself; What if Goodnight Moon addressed existential doom? 

Co-opting the book’s simplistic rhyme scheme, layout, and illustration style, I rewrote and illustrated “Goodnight Moon” in order to “adapt it for doom”. While the rework is intended to be reminiscent of the original, it has some stark differences; most notably that whereas the little bunny falls asleep after the lights are turned out at the end of the original story, the little bunny falls asleep forever at the end of the adapted version, when the lights are turned out on all of humanity as a result nuclear annihilation. Accompanied by nineteen new hand-painted illustrations, the adapted plot sees the little bunny notice all of the good and bad that will be lost if humanity is destroyed, and then say goodnight as it becomes clear that all hope is gone. 

As a stand-alone work of art which tells a story about a nuclear end to humanity, this project most closely addresses material from weeks 1 and 9, which deal with the doomsday clock/nuclear annihilation, and the artistic imagination of threat and speculative design, respectively. Recognizing that artistic works like these synthesize information and display depth of understanding in a way that is very different from essays or op-eds, for example, extreme care was taken to select items which would be intentionally thought provoking for the reader; to include details which may modify meaning or inspire new questions; and to spur readers to think deeply about many of the important discussions we have had in this course on human agency and responsibility, severity of doom, and the interconnected nature of the many existential threats that humanity faces. Other themes addressed in the reworked version include (but are certainly not limited to); policy responses to existential threats and political instability, information threat, the inspiring hope of youth, and the question of what aspects of life are truly valuable and worth working to save. Some ways in which “Goodnight Moon- Adapted for Doom” engages with topics are plainly obvious; for example, we discover towards the end of the book that the golden clock that sits on top of the fireplace in the cover illustration is actually The Atomic Bulletin of Scientists’ Doomsday Clock, set at “100 seconds to bedtime,” which speaks for itself. However, some ways are less obvious. Why is the little bunny- who we can presume is a young child- reading Time Magazine and watching business news on TV? Why does the news project a positive economic outlook, despite dramatic falls in the prices of the world’s most stable blue chip stocks? What does this say about the danger of misinformation, media, and social media? About viral information funnels which so frequently suck in young kids? About capitalism? This project was created in order to be open to interpretation, and as a result, I purposefully aim to present it without too much discussion or direction beyond that contained in this blog post.

This book certainly deals with mature themes, and reads as both darkly humorous and chilling to adult readers who can understand the deeper meaning behind the colorful pictures and simple rhyme schemes. Though it would slot in well with the “children’s books for adults” genre (which includes books like “All My Friends Are Dead,” and “If You Give a Kid a Cookie, Will He Shut the F*** Up?”), it is my hope that despite this project’s utterly depressing nature, parents harness the power of this speculative fiction to “act as a catalyst for collectively redefining our relationship to reality” (Dunne and Raby 2013, 16). The original “Goodnight Moon” is often read to extremely young children, who may not even have the ability to understand any of the words in the story. Once they do, the introductions of basic objects get small kids to ask simple but important questions that inform their views of the world. What? Why? How? In today’s world, the doom-adapted version of this book reads as absurdist. In tomorrow’s world, it may not. If we consider that the future of humanity may be in the hands of the next generation, it is perhaps more important than ever that adults take responsibility to introduce the challenges of tomorrow to the youngest members of society, today. If projects like this and others function to educate, perhaps there is hope that children will grow up motivated to prevent the potential downfall of humanity that adults once told them about. If today’s parents fail, we may enter a challenging reality in which I have to read this book each night to my children for an entirely different reason; to calm their fears about the impending end of the world, and to get them in the habit of saying “Goodnight to all they love before going to sleep, since one day we won’t wake up.

Bibliography

Brown, Margaret W., and Clement Hurd. 1947. Goodnight Moon. N.p.: Harper.

Dunne, Anthony, and Fiona Raby. 2013. Speculative everything: design, fiction, and social dreaming. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.