The Lorax

By Dr. Seuss

I assumed this was a classic because they made a movie.  I don't have a lot of positive feelings towards this book.  I mean, I'm an environmentalist, for sure, but this was pretty heavy handed.

I feel like either you tell a morality tale, or you teach kids to read with nonsense words.  I guess it might be possible to combine the two, but this seems to me to be a failed attempt.  Too much compromise on both counts.  No kid learning to read is going to work his way through this many paragraphs. 

The morality part of it seems a little far to the left.  Like, of the "let's all live in the forest and eat bird droppings" variety.  Understand, I'm about as left leaning as they come, politically speaking, and this book still seemed a little weird.  And then the ending is kind of up in the air, which doesn't work for young kids. 

My 3 year old did not understand this story at all.  And was bored.  It's probably appropriate for a 5 year old.  By the time I was 5, I was bored with Dr. Seuss, but to each their own.  Overall, I guess it's okay as a book about sustainable living, but surely there's something better out there that doesn't rhyme?  Maybe even non-fiction?

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish

 By Dr. Seuss

The 50'th anniversary edition, so it's gold.  It's also the party edition, whatever that means.

I was seriously disappointed in this book.  It's one of the most famous Dr. Seuss books, but I'd never read it and always wondered what I was missing out on.

4 pages about fish and then a lot of rambling.

 Now, the rambling can be okay if it's justified.  And it's justified in this book because it's teaching you to read with phonics.  But the ideas are pretty boring and there's no effort whatsoever to link the ideas together.  And it's SO long.  "Hop on Pop" is aimless and meandering, and to be fair, some of it probably could have been cut, but at least each 'story' lasts more than two pages and the whole thing overall is fairly short.  My daughter likes "Hop on Pop".

She didn't even ask to read "One Fish Two Fish" a second time and promptly forgot it was in the house.  I sent it back to the library after a single read-through.

Plus it's filled with nothing but Seuss' imaginary characters which are annoying after a while.  Some people argue that they all look the same, and I tend to agree.


There are so many early readers out there that are so much better than this.

I Wish that I Had Duck Feet

 By Theo LeSieg

This isn't a bad book.  I mean, the rhythm is pretty bad, but the subject matter makes up for it.  I also don't mind the made-up creature named the "Which What Who".

When I read it with my kids, though, I'm drawn to the subplot.  For me this is a book about bullying.

 This is Big Bill Brown.  He's sad in most of the pictures.  Here he is being left out of the fun while the protagonist enjoys a splash in the pond.

 Here he is, bereft that all of his friends are leaving him to play with the protagonist.

We're not supposed to feel that sorry for him, though; here he is tying the protagonist to a tree with his own tail.  But not until after the bratty little show off had finished parading around the school and town.

But these are all imagined events.  If the little blonde boy at the heart of our story is so preoccupied with teaching Big Bill a lesson, is it because big bill is a bully?  How much of a bully?  Is the situation simply resolved by the little boy going back to his normal life devoid of animal appendages?

I think we'll probably buy this book in the end.  There was a lot of disappointment expressed when we had to return it to the library.

Fox in Socks

 By Dr. Seuss

This one is a classic.  It was one of my favourites as a kid.  I spent a lot of time trying to memorize as much of it as possible.

 Not all of it is great, and it's really for older kids with a decent attention span.  Lucky that I memorized most of it ahead of time, too, because it's nothing but insane tongue twisters.

The last few pages are all about Tweetle Beetles, which I loved as a kid, but now that I'm an adult, that whole section is totally annoying.

But it's a rhyming phonetic book, so we read it all anyway.

In A People House

 By Theo LeSieg, or Dr. Seuss
Illustrated by Roy McKie

Hey, it's a Theo LeSieg book that isn't terrible.  It's a great little reader with some easy to read words, some difficult common words, and a few not-so-common and a fair bit tricky to read words that they should have left out.

 The words for objects are large and printed in red, which is nice.  The rhyming is fine, but the rhythm is off.  It's better than most LeSieg books.

The story is great.  Mouse invites bird inside house.  They explore it and name all of the objects.  The people come home and kick them out.  My daughter really loves this book because she gets the joke (which is very rarely the case).  I'm glad I picked it up.

Hop on Pop

 By Dr. Seuss

I go this one because it seemed to be popular.  I never read it as a kid.  I'm pretty impressed.  It's all about phonetics.  It has no weird made-up animals or objects.  It doesn't even have a plot.

 It's a bit disjointed, nowhere near as fine tuned as "Go, Dog. Go!", and some of the drawings are kind of creepy.  But it gets the job done.

I have yet to see another book in this style with a comparable page layout.  Finding good first readers really is the pits.

I don't mind reading this one over and over, but it's long.  Very long.

Snow

 By P. D. Eastman
Illustrated by Roy McKie

I picked this up because it was written by the author of one of my favourite books, "Go, Dog. Go!"

It's disappointing to say the least.  The meter is off, the rhymes consist of the same three or four words over and over again, the plot is pretty predictable.

The dog is cute.

The one saving grace is that it's short.  Very short.  It also helped me explain to my daughter what snow and winter were.  It rains most of the year where we are and we're really lucky to get snow.

Ten Apples Up On Top

 By Theo. LeSieg
Illustrated by Roy McKie

This book was actually written by Dr. Seuss under a different pen name.  It's a counting book with animals putting apples on their heads.

The concept is great.  The drawings are cute.  The execution is disappointing.

There are very, very few rhyming words, so the whole thing gets stale fast.  The meter is so off that you have to really move the words around to make it work.  Sometimes I have to re-read things a couple times to get the rhythm happening.  That's lazy writing.

This book is still popular, though.  Partly for the animals, and partly for the slapstick.  I read it regardless of my reservations because we don't have a lot of good counting books in the house.

The Cat in the Hat

 By Dr. Seuss

We don't actually like this book that much.  As a kid I used to get fairly anxious about how he came in unannounced and messed up their house (in particular, their mum's dress).

Our daughter loves this book.  Which is probably good.  Hopefully it means that she's less neurotic than us.

Go, Dog. Go!

 By P. D. Eastman

(This is the full book.  The board book is barely even the same book, heavily edited and with new text.  Don't bother with it.)

I've always loved this book for many reasons.  The absurdity of the coloured dogs.  The angularity of the 60-style art.  The "Do you like my hat?" sequences.  The list goes on.

 This is a book about colours, numbers, prepositions, conversation, simple everyday concepts, and more.

It features a lot of repetition, especially of the words "Go" and "Dog", which makes it a great early reader.

There is no story, which kids love.  I'm going to end up saying this in every post, but kids love a book with lots of pictures, repetitive words, simple, interesting concepts and no plot.

As a feminist, I'm a little irked that the only female character in the book is constantly looking to a man for validation through her choices in apparel.

But it was written in the 60's, and furthermore, if it didn't bother me as a kid it probably won't bother my own children.




Here is one of my favourite reviews.

Dr. Seuss's ABC

 My daughter loves this book because she already knows her alphabet very well, so she likes to pretend to read it.  The book teaches letter sounds as well as letter recognition.  Some people may take issue with the fact that it introduces all sounds made by the letters, whereas a lot of phonic courses only teach the most common sounds first.

Personally, because we're so far ahead of the curve on this one, I figure if I just expose her to a lot of different books that teach reading, she'll pick it up in the next three yeas regardless of what method they adhere to.

 My husband hates Dr. Seuss for pages like this.  Stupid made up stuff.  And I get it, because I never liked that "Oh the Thinks You Can Think" book.  This one has very few made up animals and objects, so it doesn't bother me.

I also like the layout.  And the verse is altered a little for every letter, so it doesn't get repetitive.

My only problem is that they pronounce Z as "Zee" instead of "Zed". 

But I always read it as "Zed" anyway.  It makes for a delightfully jarring ending.

Green Eggs and Ham

 I kind of loved/hated this book when I was a kid.  The story arc, is pretty good.  How the characters get there is pretty annoying.  The idea that you're going to teach a child to eat that food they hate by convincing them that they're being like the dog with the big hat is laughable.

(My daughter often asks me what that dog's name is and what he is.  I mean, I tell her it's a dog, but it isn't really, is it?)

My daughter loves this book because she's still young and repetitive rhyming books are endlessly entertaining to her.  The rhymes in Dr. Seuss are always pretty good, too.  And the meter matches up properly.  So I can handle it.

This is my favourite page.  I kind of wish I had a print of it to frame and hang on the wall.

Great Day for Up

 By Dr. Seuss and Quentin Blake

I love Quentin Blake, which is probably the main reason I like this book.  It's half decent Dr. Seuss fare.  It doesn't get requested often, but it's reasonably popular.

This is a good pre-phonetic book.  If your child can learn to recognize the word "Up", then presumably they could move on to "Hop on Pop" and learn to read "Cup" and "Pup"

I'm interested in finding other books that focus on memorizing one sound the whole way through.  I haven't found any yet.