“This mess is so deep and so big and so tall…’”
I still recite that line today.
My son loved “If I Ran the Circus.” My husband read it to him every night for months. Ditto “One Fish Two Fish.”
We didn’t care much for The Cat in the Hat. My kids loved the longer Seuss books, particularly If I Ran the Zoo (and Circus), Scrambled Eggs Super, and On Beyond Zebra. The absolute favorite book in our house was The Sneetches and Other Stories - four memorable and funny stories that I nearly had memorized at one time.
I occasionally tried to skip pages when the kid I was reading to was young enough to fall for it, because many of his books are just so repetitive. My kids caught on quickly, though. The longest read was The 500 Hats of Bartholemew Huggins. They didn’t ask for that one often.
I am obligated to love Dr. Seuss. My kid went to Dartmouth medschool, which was changed to the Geisel School of Medicine in 2012 after his widow made an undisclosed HUGE donation. Theodore Geisels time at Dartmouth was colorful to say the least and I can only imagine he is laughing from the beyond that his name is now on their Medschool.
My sons liked some Seuss (Lorax, Sneetches, Zax, 500 Hats, Yertle, etc) but I remember them liking our big Madeline and Curious George anthologies just as much or more.
I did a summer long sermon series based on Dr Seuss books. The congregation loved it.
@MaineLonghorn Go Dog Go is not a Dr. Seuss book. 
P. D. Eastman was the author.
oops, I see others got their first!
I always liked the P. D. Eastman books better than the Dr. Seuss books, especially “Are You My Mother?”, “Flap Your Wings” and “Sam and the Firefly”.
I agree that the nonsensical Dr Seuss books aren’t the best and skip many pages. But the ones with actual stories are great. My favorite is Oh the places you will go! My wife has my D20 teachers write a note in it every year since kindergarten. It will be a great surprise graduation gift.
My dark horse favorite is My Many Colored Days. It’s simple and great.
The only one I really liked was Horton Hears a Who. We used the line “A person’s a person, no matter how small” with our kids from infancy on. It was our code phrase to remind each other & them that our kids were autonomous humans who deserved the right to be heard and treated with respect, even when they were very small. It paid big dividends — I’m glad we had that phrase as a reminder.
I do love the Grinch cartoon (not the newer movies), Once we went into a fancy Chinese restaurant in Seattle, and they played the entire soundtrack over the speaker system while we were eating. No TV — just the sound. :))
Oh, I know Go Dog Go wasn’t a Seuss book. Someone else mentioned it, so I was just posting about how it helped our son.
As an Ecologist I am required, as part of receiving my PhD, to like The Lorax. Should I ever express any sentiment to the contrary, I will have my PhD revoked immediately.
I prefer some of his other books though. I actually have always liked his nonsensical drawings. Since I find most drawings of animals to be unrealistic anyways, I really like that he doesn’t even make an attempt at trying to make his drawings realistic, or even of some living creature. He is fairly subversive in most of his books. He teaches strong positive social justice messages (though some are a bit heavy handed, or. more correctly, heavy shelled), promoted conservation, and even poked gentle fun at scientists. I also am fond of his tongue twisters and weird imagery. Most of all, his books are FUN. Even today so many children’s books are heavy and serious (not Sandra Boyton, she’s amazing).
As somebody who used to collect all manners of living creatures and bring them home to raise, one of my favorite rhymes was (from One Fish, Two Fish):
Look what we found in the park in the dark.
We will take him home, we will call him Clark.
He will live at our house, he will grow and grow.
Will our mother like this? We don’t know.
I’m a fan, love the way he twisted words and I think there was lots of meaning to some of his work. One of my favorites: “Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.” – Dr. Seuss
Timely thread. I met D halfway between our home and her school last weekend, which ended up being Springfield, MA and we went to the Dr. Seuss museum. Small but interesting. I’ve always wanted to see it…I wouldn’t make a special trip but the admission included 5 museums so we ventured through two others and then threw some money away at the new MGM casino in town lol.
I dislike the cat in the hat and his ways. However I love the other Dr. Seuss books. We kept the half dozen or so we owned when we downsized and edited book collections. My adult favorite was given to me for a birthday a few years ago- “You’re Only Old Once”. The kid books (except that nasty Cat in the Hat) were fun to read aloud to gifted kid. Nice to be silly, rhyming et al. Definitely a fan.
I think Dr. Seuss books have a clever play with language, as well as several underlining meanings. I think his body of work is cool.
My daughter got to act/sing/dance the role of Sam in Green Eggs and Ham in a symphony of the book set to music and performed it with various symphonies around the country, including the National Symphony at the Kennedy Center when she was a kid…as well as a symphony of the story, Gertrude McFuzz, with the book set to music, in the role of Gertrude McFuzz for a few years as a kid. So fun. Also, her first role out of college was on the National Tour of Seussical (also playing Gertrude McFuzz) for young audiences. So, these portrayals of Seuss material played a role in the early professional life of my D as a performer.
Our family favorites are The Wonderful Sounds Mr Brown Can Do, And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street, Fox in Socks, Wocket in my Pocket.
I really can’t stand Cat in the Hat. At all.
Not directly related to Dr Seuss books, but early reading – have you seen the stories about a principal who “hosts” a weekly bedtime readaloud on FB Live for her students who don’t come from a reading household? swoon
GD likes The Wonderful Sounds Mr Brown Can Do. Very appropriate for a toddler learning animal and other sounds. Fortunately, DIL and I like reading it to her. S hates the book.