Goodnight Moon detested by a children’s librarian?

It’s hard to believe, but  Anne Carroll Moore DID NOT like Goodnight Moon, the famous picture book by Margaret Wise Brown. Moore was a leading advocate for children’s rights in the library, developing the children’s room at Pratt Institute and at New York Public. Moore graduated from Pratt with a degree in library science in 1896 and developed a set of standards for children titled the four respects: respect for children, for children’s books, for fellow workers and for the professional standing of children’s librarians. We librarians owe her a huge debt of gratitude. Before 1896 children were seen as a nuisance in the library, and often excluded until the age of 14. But oddly enough, she had a wee problem with censorship, refusing to order Wise’s classic for NYPL. She also didn’t like Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little, two classic children’s chapter books. Oh well, none of us are perfect…