Good Night, Gorilla

Good Night, Gorilla is an adorable little nearly-wordless book. A zookeeper walks through the zoo at night, saying goodnight to all the animals. ("Good night, [animal name]" are the only printed words.) Unbeknownst to him, the gorilla has stolen his keys, slipped out of his cage, and followed him around, letting out each animal after he says goodnight. The animals all follow the zookeeper home and curl up for the night in his bedroom. But the zookeeper's wife notices, and leads them all back to the zoo... except for the sneaky gorilla.

I think this was the first wordless book we got. I picked it up at a garage sale, and Charlie immediately fell in love with it, setting off a major phase of obsession with gorillas and monkeys. I'm not kidding when I say we probably read this fifteen times a day at one point.

I originally assumed that this story was decades old, for a couple of reasons. The style of drawing looks very classic 1950s, the house (and the wife in a nightgown and cap) also look very old-fashioned, and the zoo animals are kept in old-fashioned cages with bars, not at all like a modern zoo. But it turns out that it was written in 1994 and just stylized to look like the past. In any case, I will readily call this a modern classic.

The story has the potential to be very boring for adults, since it's repetitive and the illustration style is fine but not particularly gorgeous. But actually, there are a lot of "visual jokes" that you won't spot on the first (or third, or fifth) reading but that you'll notice in the background later. Just to give one example of the kind of thing I'm talking about, since I don't want to spoil it for you, the elephant has a Babar doll lying on the floor of his cage. Things like that. I always managed to notice a new one right when I was at the point of extreme aggravation at having to read the book "one more time" for Charlie.

Cute story, obsessive interest from child, and interest thrown in for the parents -- that all adds up to my highest recommendation.