Goodnight Forest Moon

© DzignSpace.com

As an educator, I passionately believe that reading aloud to your child is one of the most important things a parent can do for (and with!) their children, and you can start start kindling a love for reading from day one. (I’ve read about moms who read aloud to their baby bumps, even!) I’ve been building up the geekling’s library with a few of the classic must-have children’s books throughout my pregnancy, and have been blessed to have many of my teacher co-workers and friends give us books over the past few months, too.

When I initially began asking around for suggestions on which titles should make the must-have list for my geekling, I saw Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown & illustrated by Clement Hurd offered up again and again as one I could not do without. The book is the perfect bedtime story; the main character is attempting to delay bedtime (Who didn’t do that as a kid?) by systematically saying goodnight to everything in the room first. The appeal of this easy-to-memorize, almost lyrical story must be why so many parenting books and sites suggest a similar “say goodnight to everything” ritual approach for winding down your own little sleep protester. It brings closure at the end of the day, preparing them for sleep. But this post is not about Goodnight Moon. This post is about Goodnight Forest Moon.

What do you get when you take a classic children’s book and apply a Star Wars parody? It’s called Goodnight Forest Moon by Noah Dziobecki over at DzignSpace.com, and it’s brilliant. Actually, brilliant may not be strong enough of a word to describe how much I love this. As you might guess, being a parody means that instead of a little rabbit main character trying to postpone inevitable slumber, you’ll read about a young stormtrooper preparing for sleep. Instead of saying goodnight to a variety of typical bedroom items that you’d find in the classic version, our young stormtrooper will instead point out and say goodnight individually to a wide variety of objects and characters straight from the Star Wars universe, like tauntauns and ewoks. Those of you familiar with the artwork of the original Goodnight Moon will delight in seeing the illustrations parodied perfectly, even down to the green walls of the great (metal) room. See? Brilliant doesn’t quite cut it. It’s pure genius!

The best part? Noah has generously made Goodnight Forest Moon available to you as a free PDF that you can print at home, complete with instructions on printing and assembling your very own copy of the book! Which means geek parents EVERYWHERE can add this version to their own libraries and share with generations of geeks to come. Hooray!

Honestly, books are the one baby gift I treasure above all others; they’re the gift that will keep on giving and will hopefully help to instill my own passion for reading within my geekling. And who wouldn’t want to introduce words like Sith and ewok to their young Padawan’s developing vocabulary?! I am ecstatic to have Goodnight Forest Moon in my repertoire of read alouds thanks to Noah Dziobecki, and I look forward to making it one of our little geek family’s bedtime traditions.

(Bonus: If the original is ever read aloud to your child when they’re not at home, by say… grandma & grandpa or a teacher… your child will pipe up about ewoks and tauntauns and the Force instead. Just imagining the look on my parents’ faces alone cracks me up.)

Happy reading!