Good Night, Gorilla Book

Good Night, Gorilla is the quintessential "first book" for very young children (6 months through to approximately 3 years). It has very few words (only "good," "night," "gorilla," "dear," "zoo" and the names of the five other animals in the book)and is brief.

Even read as merely a story, the book is engaging for a very young child, thanks to the bright colors, silly story line and playful illustrations. Where the book really shines however, is in all that you can do with it. You can start asking a two or three year old to tell you what the story is on each page. You can ask a younger child to tell you where the moon is on the page (it, or at least a piece of it, is visible somewhere on almost every page). You can ask any child to deduce certain aspects of the story, such as what color key do you think will open the lion's cage (key color matches cage color)? After several readings, you can test a child's memory with "There's only one key left on the key ring - who's cage is it for?" Other questions about how a character feels based on their facial expression and/or actions are great, too. For an older child, you can ask more complex questions such as "What is missing from the Lion's cage that all the other animals have in their cages?" or "Why do you think the zoo keeper picked those pictures to hang on his wall?"