In the great green room, There was a telephone

In the great green room
There was a telephone
And a red balloon
And a picture of—

All I have to do is open to the first page of Goodnight Moon and Lily begins crooning, “drin-rin-ding-a ling.” I don’t know why making a telephone ring sound on every single page that the telephone appears is so important to her. I have concluded that some adult (it could’ve been me, but I don’t remember) must have been responsible for interpreting the black object pictured on the bedside dresser as a telephone. There is no actual object in her daily life that looks like that, especially not anything that we either call a telephone or that makes a ringing sound.

In any case, she does not “drin-ding” on the final page. She reserves that page to say, “night-ni.”