Clearly no one needs to be told to read Margaret Wise Brown’s seminal text Goodnight Moon, which is going stronger than ever as it approaches its 80th birthday. But what this episode presupposes is that maybe we all need to talk about how creepy the book can be, no matter how much our kids might love it. To do this, I dive into Freud’s understanding of the uncanny, modulating it a bit to help understand why this cozy and sentimental book might rub us the wrong way as adults. I also make an admission perhaps even more embarrassing than that one episode with the macho man impersonation at the end of it!
Show Notes
An incomplete copy of Goodnight Moon can be found on the Internet Archive. It gets the job done!
For more thinking about this text, I highly recommend Fuse 8 ‘n Kate’s look at it, as well as this musing.