From Goodnight Moon to Art Dog

Welcome to Goodnight Moon

Enter the world of the Hurd family: artist Clement (1908-88); his wife, writer Edith (1910-97); and their son, author/illustrator Thacher (b. 1949). The Hurds have produced over one hundred books, including Clement's 1947 classic Goodnight Moon (written by Margaret Wise Brown) and Thacher Hurd's 1996 award-winning Art Dog. They have forever changed children's literature in America.

From Goodnight Moon to Art Dog: The World of Clement, Edith, and Thacher Hurd is presented by

Bank of America Foundation

Mimi and Peter Freeman

The Carter Fund for Museum Education

Anonymous

Lenders to the exhibition to whom the Shelburne Museum owes a debt of gratitude are Thacher and Olivia Hurd; The Kerlan Collection of Children's Literature, University of Minnesota; Jeanette Pyle; and Ann Wetzel.

The exhibition was organized by the Shelburne Museum, Shelburne, Vermont, and was the result of a collaborative effort with Thacher Hurd.

Edith Thacher Hurd (1910-97)

Missouri-born author Edith Thacher graduated from Radcliffe College in 1933 and enrolled at New York City's Bank Street College of Education, where she met Margaret Wise Brown. They joined a group of rebellious artists and writers keen to create new and different picture books for children, works that would be grounded in the world around them. Thacher and Brown collaborated on seven books.

Edith's favorite creative partner was her illustrator husband, Clement. They met in the mid 1930s at a party hosted by a mutual friend and were married in 1939. Over the course of 45 years, the Hurds produced more than 50 children's books.

Edith Hurd at the Typewriter on Cape Cod, 1930s

Photographer Unknown

Courtesy of Thacher Hurd

Clement Hurd (1908-88)

In 1931, soon after graduation from Yale University, New-York-born Clement Hurd went off to live in Paris, where radical new art was developing. During his two years in France, he studied painting under modernist Fernand Léger (1881-1955). Léger's bold, simplified approach to composition and focus on the use of primary colors had a profound impact on Hurd's artistic development.

In 1938, Clement Hurd's abstract study for a mural was seen by Margaret Wise Brown, then a rapidly rising star in the field of children's literature. She felt Hurd's modernist style would be perfect for children's books and invited him to collaborate with her. One of the eight books they worked on together, Goodnight Moon (first published in 1947), has become an enduring icon of American popular culture.

Clement Hurd at work in Vermont, 1930s

Photographer Unknown

Courtesy of Thacher Hurd

The Great Green Room from Goodnight Moon (1947)

In 1981, Clement Hurd received his favorite letter about the book from a mother sharing her nineteen-month-old son's experience at bedtime:

Last night, after I had read through it (Goodnight Moon) …he picked up his right foot with both hands, put it on the page, and said, "Walk… Walk. Walk. Walk." Then he tried his left foot…my son cried because he couldn't get into your room. For him it's a real place.

Diorama built by Shelburne Museum staff for this exhibition.