BOOKS: "In the great green room, there was a telephone and a red balloon... but no ashtray"

I don't know if you're familiar with the kids' book Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown. It's more than twenty-five years old and something of a classic. We have a copy, and while I wouldn't say it does the job of lulling young Master Sam off to Sleepyland, he seems to like it. In fact, he's chewing on it right now.

As kids' books go, it's pretty much the height of innocuousness. So no one was more surprised than I to learn of the recent controversy surrounding its re-release.

Publisher HarperCollins has just re-issued the newest edition of the book with a digitally altered photograph of the book's illustrator, Clement Hurd... to remove the cigarette from his mouth.

I don't know which is funnier, the ensuing media kerfuffle lamenting the overly PC age in which we live (and if you want to check out the extent of it, just go to Google and search the keywords "goodnight moon cigarette smoking smoke clement hurd"), or this revised version of the story:

In the great green room there was . . .

A cordless telephone

And a red balloon, non-helium and securely tethered out of toddler reach

And a picture of the cow jumping over the moon, with a warning label never to try this with cattle or indeed any animals without parental supervision

And there were three little bears, roaming freely in their native habitat, secure in their endangered-species status

And two little neutered kittens

And a pair of mittens, purchased from a Cambodian collective

And a little toyhouse with all potential choking hazards fastened in place by six-inch bolts

And a young and humanely captured mouse...

That's all I could cut and paste without feeling guilty. You'll have to read the rest here.