Say Goodnight, Albert: Goodnight, Lab (A Scientific Parody) by Chris Ferrie

IN THE GREAT GREEN LAB,
THERE WAS A LASER
AND A LAB NOTEBOOK

AND A PICTURE OF EINSTEIN
WITH A STERN LOOK.

No picture book has been more beloved--and more parodied--than Margaret Wise Brown's perennial best-seller, Goodnight Moon, with its familiar green cover and irregular verse form that has chronicled the steps in bedtime preparation and persuasion for generations of tykes. Indeed, the cover layout is so iconic that the subtitle A Scientific Parody is hardly necessary on Chris Ferrie's latest tot science title, Goodnight Lab: A Scientific Parody (Baby University) (Sourcebooks Jabberwocky Books, 2017).

Chris Ferrie, a writer devoted to introducing the vocabulary and concepts of science to the nursery school set, faithfully parallels the narration of Margaret Wise Brown's bedtime story. With the dour image of Albert Einstein looking down from the wall, we bid goodnight to both the thermometer and the spectronomer and selected scientific apparatus and paraphernalia and even the clutter of labwork, and Ferrie even includes that bugaboo of academics everywhere:

GOODNIGHT, RUBBISH.

GOODNIGHT, GRUMPY OLD PROFESSOR
SHOUTING "PUBLISH!"

In his several Baby University board books, such as his amazingly top-selling Quantum Physics for Babies (Baby University), Ferrie avoids the chicken-and-egg question by introducing scientific vocabulary and complex concepts to the very young simultaneously, believing that naming big ideas goes right along with early understanding of scientific principles.

In this clever parody, however, author-illustrator Ferrie offers no theories, just a comic take-off on an old bedtime standby, tossing in items such as lab coats, the ubiquitous sticky notes, lab notebooks, and ammeters and voltmeters along the way. This little board book also offers some chuckles for grownups, while simultaneously stimulating more questions than yawns--which was likely the author's plan all along.

For youngsters who love wordplay as well as lab paraphernalia, pair this one with Michael Rex's killer-diller knockoff, Goodnight Goon: a Petrifying Parody, (read review here) Rex's equally punny Runaway Mummy: a Petrifying Parody, or Michael Teitelbaum's spoof of Eric Carle's classic caterpillar tale, The Very Hungry Zombie: A Parody.