Children’s librarians, who saw themselves as crusaders for quality in a sector of publishing previously marked by slipshod and cavalier standards, regarded anything redolent of a low-budget series with suspicion.

But the books were also controversial among librarians because of their relatively cheap production values and (gasp!) lack of slipcovers. (Several chapters in In the Great Green Room mention Brown working on contracts for as many as five or six publishers at once.) Golden Books were sold in drug and department stores rather than via the traditional bookstore circuit and therefore could be produced in large quantities at a cover price that made children’s books accessible to many families for the first time.

The impressively productive Brown wrote under several pseudonyms, penning four or more titles per year for Golden Books alone. Neither does Gary acknowledge that Moore, with her acolytes in libraries across the nation, was regarded as a fearsome power in children’s publishing, even though knowing this makes the eventual success of Goodnight Moon all the more impressive. With so little background, the decision seems merely perverse and capricious, the act of a picture-book villain. Gary explains none of this, although she does note that “the head librarian at the New York Public Library” (presumably Moore, although she is never named) “was still resistant to Margaret’s style” and refused to order Goodnight Moon. Brown’s own books don’t quite fit the formula of her mentor, but she worked with Mitchell on writing and compiling textbooks and other materials, and wrote and edited titles for a Bank Street–affiliated publishing company. Mitchell and other progressive educators strongly disagreed, arguing for an approach called “Here-and-Now” that represented the world children actually live in. At that time, most children’s librarians believed that fantasy, in the form of classic fairy and folk tales, made the best reading for kids.

Goodnight moon by margaret brown