A Marginalian Editions rediscovery: Goodnight Moon author Margaret Wise Brown's little-known, philosophical children's book about love and loss, lushly illustrated by Ofra Amit. In 1950, when the love of her life fell mortally ill, Margaret Wise Brown turned to the solace of storytelling, writing a love letter in the form of a children's book. The Dark Wood of the Golden Birds brings us into a hushed and numinous world, illuminated with elegiac prose. The story begins: It happened in the woods a long time ago. In the dark woods where the golden birds sang all through the night and the day. This magic forest grows behind the house of an old man with white hair and green eyes, who is never a year older or a day younger, and who keeps honeybees and grows asparagus for a living. No one who visits him dares to venture past the edge of the wood of the golden birds, believing it to be magic: "the unknown from which there is no return." The old man himself never goes into the dark wood, but sometimes--at night, or early in the morning--he can hear laughter and singing, and the songs his mother sang to him long ago: the song of the golden birds. One day, a brother and a sister whose parents have died wander to the old man's house, and he gives them a home. The children ask again and again about the magic forest, but the old man simply tells them that "on the other side of the dark wood is the land that no one knows." When the old man falls ill, the boy decides to brave the wood in search of the birds, who he's convinced will heal him. What secret knowledge will he find there? Written with her signature poetic prose that enchanted the world with Goodnight Moon and other stories, Margaret Wise Brown's The Dark Wood of the Golden Birds is a work of uncommon beauty and tenderness that lights a path through love and loss for readers of all ages.
