Goodnight World

When it’s time to say 'Goodnight' - when you’re camping under the stars, snuggled up at home reading a book with mum, saying goodnight on the phone to a parent that’s far away or on a sleepover with friends - every language has a different way of saying the same thing. In Finnish, ‘good night’ is ‘Hyvää yötä’; in Swahili it’s ‘Usiku mwema’ and in Hindi it’s ‘Shubh raatri’. Despite our different languages and cultures, we all sleep under the same stars, and bedtime is special for everyone.

This soothing picture book has a lilting rhyme throughout and is both a lovely bedtime read and an interesting and inclusive meditation on the phrase ‘good night’ in different languages (given with a useful pronunciation guide). As well as learning the same phrase in a variety of languages, children and parents will absorb the greater message that we live in a wonderfully varied world, yet have much in common with families everywhere.