Good Night, Gorilla

This book was read at a mixed-age party and I'm sure that the adults laughed as much as the children! It has quickly become a classic, featuring the cleverly pictured sneaky antics of a renegade gorilla.
Our young hero steals the keys from a zookeeper and frees all the animals, who follow the keeper home at night. Hilarious "lights out" confusion ensues with a comical surprise ending!
34 pages, with only ten different words, the expressive, colorful pictures say it all. This playful book is appropriate for infants, toddlers, and the beginning reader as well. A delightful romp, and a surefire hit! One of those few treasured books that you'll keep for years to come.

I recommend hardcover version instead of the board book. The pictures are cut off on the board book because it is so small (about the size of my hand). The illustrations are what make this book so great. If you and your child like the book, I suggest the full hardcover version. The difference in the cost is not worth the savings.

The story's in the pictures: a mischievious gorilla borrows the zoo keeper's keys and as the zookeeper is completing his rounds, the gorilla lets the animals out. The gorilla, with all of the animals following him, ends up in the zookeeper's bedroom.
The pictures are terrific, with a lot going on in the background. There's a little mouse toting the gorilla's banana, each animal's cage has a toy, and, of course, the zookeeper's wife's surprise and familiarity with the animals following him home.
My daughter's definitely picked up some rather complex animal names (e.g., giraffe, armadillo) and picked up on the gorilla's shenanigans pretty quickly.
Very fun book.

A childhood classic! Peggy Rathman's magnum opus, which is a must for every library. We started reading this to my daughter, who is now five, when she was around 10 months old, and it is still her all time favorite book. One of her first words was "Rilla, Rilla," which is what she called it, and how she asked for this book by name, daily. This is a "storyteller's" book, mostly images, which allows both the reader and the listener to improvisationally enter into the hilarious imaginary, nocturnal world of a small zoo as its caretaker shuts it down for the night, trailed by a fun-loving, trickster gorilla who not only (spoiler alert) tiptoes behind the zookeeper/night watchman as he first locks the gates and then sneakily unlocks each one and frees the rest of the animals, but then follows the caretaker, animals in tow, to his home, where someone...is in for a surprise! From the time she was a baby until now at age 5, my daughter still bursts into gleeful fits of laughter in the book's "surprise" moment, and in fact--the look on the character's face was one of the very first imitations of a facial expression she ever did, and her very first attempt at humor--we owe to this book! A milestone. Because of that, this book is so beloved in our house, it's like a family member or a longtime friend: always welcome, always funny, always a delight--and never grows old. "Rilla Rilla" for life!

Pictures are cut off on the board book. The illustrations are what make this book so great. If your kid likes the book, I suggest the original paper edition.

I needed a break from Goodnight Moon (the only book my 15 month old will listen to uninterrupted, so I went in search of other Goodnight books and stumbled upon this one. Given the reviews, I decided to give it a whirl. It's not a hit in our home.

The story is simple, will only a few words per page, which should be a plus, but there are several pages with no text - only pictures. I think some kids might enjoy this, but for some reason, mine doesn't. There are 3 double sided pages toward the middle of the book with only pictures and 3 more at the end. The pictures advance the story, but my 15 month old doesn't really get it. I try to make up things and point out what's in the pictures, but she inevitably loses interest. This might be good for a slightly younger child that just wants to look at the pictures or a slightly older child that can tell that the pictures are advancing the story without words.

I did purchase the board book version and as one reviewer noted, a lot of the pictures are cut off. I decided that mattered less than durability at this point as my little one likes to "read" on her own and often destroys books with paper pages.

The illustrations are lovely and the colors are nice and vibrant, I also think it's a cute story, I just wish there was more to it.

I used to read this to my preschoolers by request - it was a permanent fixture in our library and I was not allowed to swap it out for new books! My kids would look for it if I took it away and I would have to bring it back. The Gorilla lets out all the animals in the zoo and follows the zoo keeper home! Mrs zoo keeper is not amused with her roomful of animals and Mr. zoo keeper has to return all the animals to their cages.

All right, I'm giving this two stars because my kids seem to like it, but it is, in my opinion, a thoroughly one-star-or-less book.

It is incredibly lame. The pictures are simplistic and not very well-drawn, and the story is nonsensical bordering on retarded-and-troubling.

And I can handle nonsensical, in fact I think some of the best kids books recognize the sort of bizarre dream state that childhood is and use that to tell engaging narratives that dance happily past logic and convention to make kids laugh and wonder. See for instance most of the gently hallucinogenic tightrope walk over the Gulf of Madness that is the collective canon of Margaret Wise Brown. That stuff makes NO sense--COLOR KITTENS, LITTLE FUR FAMILY, and that one about the talking island--but it's all lyrical to the point of being beautiful, and it's fun.

GOOD NIGHT, GORILLA, on the other hand...ugh...man...I really, really hate this book. Seriously. I have two young kids, and as I said, they like this for some reason and ask me to read it to them all the time.

AND IT SUUUUUUUUUUUUCKS. Oh wow does it suck.

First of all there are almost no words, so you can't just shift into autopilot and read the wretched thing without thinking. You've got to narrate the damn thing, and since its story is mindless and its pictures are unexciting, well, here ya go, have fun.

GOOD NIGHT, GORILLA tells the story of a zookeeper named Joe who goes around checking on the zoo animals in their cages and saying good night to them, while unbeknownst to his apparently deaf and blind or at least unbelievably distracted self, the gorilla has stolen his keys and is quietly unlocking all the other animals' cages: the elephant, the lion, the giraffe, the armadillo, whatever. Then, because animals all apparently live in bad existential faith and don't know what to do with their own freedom once they have it, they docilely and quietly follow the zookeeper into his house to fall asleep in the zookeeper's tiny bedroom.

There, the zookeeper and his wife--who is apparently also deaf and blind and in fact not even able to feel the vibrations of a full-grown elephant stomping in through their narrow door and into their bedroom--turn out the lights and say good night to one another.

Then, all the animals say "Good Night!" as well, one at a time, showing a really freaky dark side to the whole story. THEY'RE KEPT LOCKED IN CAGES, BUT THEY CAN TALK! They're as sentient and intellectual as humans--in fact far more so than the staggeringly ignorant humans in this story--and they're being kept in cages! This is...slavery!

This is not charming--this is demented.

Anyway, this alerts the zookeeper's wife who leads all the talking animals back to their cages as if this happens all the time, but the gorilla grabs the keys again and sneaks back into the house where they climb into bed between the zookeeper and his wife and fall asleep. Because that's all animals want, to be with people. Oh, if only all wild animals could be kept in cages and/or beds, how happy they would be! What the zookeeper and his wife will say when they find the giant sleeping gorilla between them in the morning, I don't know. Probably something along the lines of, "Oh, our lives are so terrible and we are so stupid, someone should write a book about us and illustrate it with mundane, unexciting, uninspired drawings."

In conclusion: do not order this book for your kids unless you have a nanny robot that is raising them for you, because if you're the one who reads to them, this book will do nothing but make you hate life and the act of reading aloud to your children. Your children will continually ask you to read this book to them because something in it may appeal to their young minds that don't know any better, you will read it, they will sense your reluctance, they will perceive that you think reading is unexciting, they will no doubt inherit that belief, will grow up illiterate (or just as bad, aliterate), will not be able to hold a good job as a result, will find themselves homeless during a low point in the economy, and will probably die of exposure beneath a bridge somewhere. That's how bad this book is.

And really, there are so many actually GOOD kids books out there, just don't take that chance. This book is a horrific chore, and if you can avoid it, do. There is no joy to be found here, no joy at all.

This is by far my favorite and my 21 month old daughter's favorite. The illustrations are amazing in their detail. I've been reading it to my daughter since she was about 8 months old, and I'm still finding fun "treasures" in the pictures - such as the people appearing in the window of the neighbor's house, the photo on the bedside table. There are so many others, but I don't want to give it away as the fun is in discovering. There is so much to this book with few words - my daughter gets different things out of it at different stages of her development. As an infant she liked the rhythmic "Goodnight Gorilla...Goodnight...Elephant, etc." and the bright colors. As she started learning animals, she loved pointing out the zoo animals. Later she was enthralled by finding the banana on every page. Lately she has been interested inthe different items in each of their cages. She was so excited the evening she realized the doll in the armadillo's cage was "Baby Ernie!". You won't be disappointed.

I ordered two copies of this book based on all the positive reviews (one as a gift and one for my 9 month old), they are both being sent back. We have a collection of great board books this one is not worthy among them and it is not good enough to be given as a gift. I can't understand how people rave about this book, the text is boring and unimaginative, the art is not very good and the overall feeling of animals in cages does not make for pleasant dreams ( the animals do end up back in their cages for the night!). There are tons of other great books in this range keep looking... We ordered Time For Bed by Mem Fox and it has light years more character and charm.
For the record I don't spend my time knocking children's books. If people are going to pay good money for something they have a right to know peoples opinions.
I admit the gorilla and mouse are kind of cute...but not cute enough for us.