Parenthood: Week 325 – Ethan's Favorite Book: Good Night Gorilla

Toddlers understand more than they can express. They know more nouns and names for objects than they can speak. They have preferences for foods, clothing, and they even have favorite books. It’s this really cool moment when they reveal these things to you. It’s an expression of the development of cognitive functions. The signs of this growth doesn’t happen in a scheduled or consistent way. It’s not like you see one milestone a week. They come when you don’t expect it and often they come in spurts.

I was so excited when Diana told me a couple week ago that Ethan’s favorite book was Good Night Gorilla (here it is at amazon). It’s such a wonderful sign after months of trying to read to Ethan and him pushing books away, (or trying to eat them), and rarely getting to the end of an eight-page board book, Ethan finally was getting into reading.

I remember having favorite books that I read to Ollie developing before Ollie showed preferences for favorite books to me. So this was new and very cool. It’s a great feeling to have Ethan reach towards a stack of books, pick up his favorite and feel him settle down in my lap in anticipation of me reading this story to him.

Goodnight Gorilla by Peggy Rathmann is one of my favorite childrens books. It’s about a zoo keeper who says goodnight to animals in the zoo. The catch is that there is a gorilla who steals the zookeeper's keys and keeps releasing animals as soon as the zookeeper says goodnight to them. The animals all end up in his bedroom. The zookeepers partner wakes up to find all of the animals crammed in and around the bed. She walks them back to the zoo, but somehow the gorilla ends up back in the bed at the end of the book.


There’s very few words, but the very storytelling more than makes up the few but perfectly chosen text. There’s so much to do in this book when reading it to a child.  There’s animals sounds, colors (each key is a different color to match the cages), lots of details in each picture, and a balloon that you can track across each page that gets smaller as it floats into the sky.

I don’t know what Ethan finds appealing about this book. Maybe it’s the different animals sounds we encourage him to make. Maybe it’s the page with all of the “goodnight” dialog bubbles that me and Diana always do in funny voices. Or maybe Ethan can relate to the gorilla sneaking into the bed in the middle of the night to co-sleep, which is Ethan's preferred way of sleeping.

Maybe he knows this books pushed into our arms will give him positive attention from us and he simply enjoys being close to us.

Whatever the reason, it's not important I figure it out.  All that matters is that he has a book that he loves, that we enjoy reading to him, and that we have moments when we can share the magic of books together.