The 50 Best One-Star Amazon Reviews of Goodnight Moon

Margaret Wise Brown’s classic children’s book Goodnight Moon was published on this day in 1947. It’s widely beloved, well-reviewed, and much parodied, and also hated intensely by a serious few. You know where this is going—I compile at least one of these one-star reviews pieces a month, but I have to say: this was one of my favorites.

In the one-star reviews of Goodnight Moon, you will notice plenty instances of that same tired complaint every classic seems to get, which is that it’s “booooooring,” but apparently Goodnight Moon has some other, deeper, issues. The book “lacks racial diversity,” rhymes “moon” with “moon” (“unacceptable”), “teaches children flawed natural order,” and of course “is symbolic of child abduction, moon worship, freemasonry, and the fracturing of personalities that comes from torture.” Turns out people read a lot into children’s books, and also have no earthly idea what “mush” is, but think it must be something either very boring or very evil.

As always, the book has its defenders—including (I think) one Philip S. Wolf, who may or may not also be Doctor Enchanto, who seems to hate this “crap book” which “blows chunks,” but who sounds pretty sarcastic to me. Decide for yourself below.

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