All young readers will delight at knowing the trick the animals play on the unsuspecting zoo keeper! It’s bedtime and the zoo keeper sets off to lock the animals up for the night. But, the gorilla has a clever plan. When bedtime comes, will everyone be in their beds? Don’t you believe it!
'Good night, Gorilla', says the night watchman as he finishes his rounds at the zoo. But Gorilla has other ideas, deftly pick-pocketing the watchman's keys and letting himself out of his cage, whilst letting Elephant, Lion, Hyena, Giraffe and Armadillo out too! The weary watchman makes his way home and into bed...unaware that his friends from the zoo are right behind him.
A calm yet amusing tale for bedtime, with wonderfully soft illustrations and beautiful hidden details to discover, Good Night, Gorilla won the 1994 Cuffie award for "Most Likely to Succeed in Years Ahead” and is now a modern classic that is a must in every child's library. Junior magazine also listed it in their top 100 children’s books.
Peggy Rathmann's first children's book, Ruby the Copycat, turned an embarrassing personal incident into a well-received story and earned the most promising new author distinction in the 1991 Cuffies Awards. Her second book, Good Night, Gorilla, was an American Library Association Notable Children's Book and her third title, Officer Buckle and Gloria, allowed Rathmann to walk off with the Caldecott Medal in 1996. Good Night Gorilla was inspired by Peggy's love for gorillas, I wanted to teach sign language to gorillas, but after taking a class in signing, I realized what I'd rather do was draw pictures of gorillas . Ms. Rathmann studied commercial art at the American Academy in Chicago, fine art at the Atelier Lack in Minneapolis, and children's-book writing and illustration at the Otis Parsons School of Design in Los Angeles. Peggy's homework assignment produced an almost wordless story, Good Night, Gorilla, inspired by a childhood memory.
