The Worst Seuss

I've always enjoyed Dr. Seuss's children's books. Before I had a child I had not read very many of them, but the ones I had read always struck me as jovial, funny, silly and interesting in a quirky sort of way. I had a friend roughly my age who was a big Seuss fan at the age of 3, and this never seemed odd to me. A couple of years ago I read Oh, The Places You'll Go! and thought it was just great because it wasn't just a happy-happy isn't-life-always-wonderful joyfest of unrealistic puffery. Fox In Socks is really fun too. In our culture, your sort of supposed to like Dr. Seuss, so I just did.

But I have to admit, the more Seuss I read, the more I believe that sometimes the good Doctor wasn't really trying very hard. The worst I've found is There's a Wocket in My Pocket where Theodore completely phones it in with a deluge of made up rhymes. A WOSET in the CLOSET? Sure, the appeal of some of Dr. Seuss is the images of strange and wonderful places and creatures that have unusual sounding names to go with the other-worldly scenery. But come on... have you noticed how often these names conveniently form a rhyme? I mean, a NOOTH GRUSH on my TOOTHBRUSH? Seriously, it seems even Dr. Seuss considered it a bit of a stretch: the subtitle calls it a "Book of Ridiculous Rhymes". I'll say.

And while I'm on the subject of bad Seuss books, let me rant a bit about the atrocities committed by Random House with their two flap-book versions of The Foot Book and the magnificent classic Green Eggs and Ham. These are both wonderful books in their standard binding. If you don't know what a flap book is, it's one of those books with thick pages with flaps cut in them so a child (or parent) can work on some fine motor skills by opening the flap to reveal some hidden text or picture. Now, the thing about young kids is that they don't know how to read and couldn't care less about the order in which the flaps are explored. The various Maisey books understand this and are quite fun for an adult to share with a child.

But the Dr. Seuss flap books are maddening, as your child will randomly open and skip flaps, turning Mr. Geisel's usually delightful poetry into a choppy word salad. If that weren't bad enough, the folks at Random House have desecrated The Foot Book by pointlessly editing and adding verses (not to mention sloppy art, which is a lesser problem, although noticeable). The end result for the literate half of the reading team (especially someone who has long ago memorized the text of the book) is a grating, random, dissociated mess. Awful.