Goodnight Gorilla Review

This week, I am reviewing a childhood favorite Good Night Gorilla by Peggy Rathman. It is really hard to find a lot of fault with a book that only has 9 words in it, but if you think that difficulty of finding issues with a book will stop me, you haven't been reading my blog very carefully! For starters, yes this book only has 9 words in total. Count with me! Gorilla is 1, elephant is 2. hyena is 3, dear is 4, lion is 5, zoo is 6, armadillo is 7, giraffe is 8, and goodnight is 9! "But Josh," you say, ""Good" and "night" are very clearly two different words on the cover above. Shouldn't they be counted as two words?" Nope. "Goodnight" is what you say to somebody when you or they are going to sleep. "Good night" is what you say when you are telling somebody that you had a "good night" at the widget factory. Peggy doesn't get credit for two separate words there just because she misused them!

The setting: The strangest zoo ever that has a hyena, a mouse, and an armadillo

The characters: Gorilla, an absent minded zoo night watchman, the night watchman's wife, Giraffe, Hyena, Elephant, Lion, a mouse, Armadillo, and a mysterious disappearing and reappearing key chain

This story begins with Gorilla taking a key chain off of the stupid night watchman's belt as the watchman goes from animal to animal making sure everything is okay in the zoo. However, the absent minded watchman, who clearly has some sort of neck issue because he never looks behind him at any point in the story, is followed by Gorilla opening all the cages of the other animals. 

As you can see from the page above, each cage that is opened by Gorilla is opened with a key on the key chain that Gorilla stole. However, after each cage is opened, the corresponding key is left by Gorilla in the cage. After getting out of their cages, the animals follow the zoo watchman to his house, which appears to be in the zoo. Zoo watchman is a shitty job, indeed!

The animals follow him into his house through a door that is conspicuously left open...

And follow him into his bedroom. Somehow the zoo watchman still hasn't turned around to see the animals all snuggled up and ready to sleep. Also, somehow the lion hasn't eaten him yet. However, the zoo watchman, after a long day of not watching out for the animals in the zoo, apparently is exhausted and sleeps through his wife's revelation that there are a ton of animals in his house. She brings all the animals out and back to their cages, even Gorilla.

BUT WHAM! Look at that!!! Gorilla has the keys and key chain again! How did that happen? Did the wife not collect the keys left in each cage when she brought the animals back, and if she didn't, HOW DID SHE CLOSE THE CAGES! So what are we left to think? Evidently Gorilla pick-pocketed the zoo watchman's wife like he did the zoo watchman and she didn't realize it either? These are the worst zoo watchmen in history! I mean, seriously. Also, what the heck is that little mouse doing? Is he dragging a banana behind him? Is he Gorilla's little banana lackey? Why is there a mouse in the zoo, anyway? Who the hell goes to a zoo to see a mouse? That's just absurd. 

AH! The lion is eating that elephant! Somebody help!

In summation, Gorilla is a master pick-pocketer that thieves his way into the zoo watchman's bed. I don't get it. Children too young to read won't understand the intricacies of the human animal relationship, and children old enough to understand it can read more than 9 words. Unfortunately, Lily loves this book, probably because I add about 10 extra pages of dialogue to it, different each time I "read" it to her. She gives this 5 out of 5 stars, so make sure to pick up your copy of Good Night, Gorilla today. It can be found BEFORE Goodnight Moon in your local book store because "Good" with a space comes before "Goodn" alphabetically. SCAM! You can also buy it at Amazon for $7.19, 80 cents cheaper than the cover price above. Happy reading!