Best Dr. Seuss Book

http://badsweaterguy.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451c33b69e2010536028827970b-800wi

Can I borrow a dollar?
Ooh, you a star-bellied Sneetch now.

kinda amazed the Lorax came out in 1971

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KT2bme0lG1Y&feature=related

Pure nostalgia: One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, which I'm pretty sure was the first book my mom ever read to me. (Still have the copy.) Not much of a plot, as I remember it.

inclined to go for the Oobleck. that one always appealed to me for some reason

it's Dr. Seuss at his most kafka-esque

THE SNEETCHES

teaching kids about racism, classism, and about whacked out stoner dudes that drive weird red machines

honorary poll option:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgILxqN_jxE

There's a great line in The Squid and the Whale where the teenage kid tries to impress a girl by calling "The Metamorphosis" Kafkaesque.

Bartholomew Cubbings, please! Tho we still put my nephew's shoes and socks on by saying, "One foot, two foot; red foot, blue foot!"

The semi-colon is silent.

what about the g

There's a great line in The Squid and the Whale where the teenage kid tries to impress a girl by calling "The Metamorphosis" Kafkaesque.

lol - Oobleck really is kafka-esque though! It resolves itself with a more moralistic message than kafka would have used though (just say "you're sorry!" duh)

would like to rep for fox in socks

here's a great line in The Squid and the Whale where the teenage kid

I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew

it was my favorite when i was a kid even though it's not really aimed at kids message-wise iirc

it isn't?

is the message "don't stick your dick in these holes" or something?

yes

I vote for little known sequel "Horton Gets Inconvenienced At the Supermarket"

horton passes a kidney stone

never read (or was read) any of these

are you from Mars

Fox ftw.

i will not eat in a tram

The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins

I was obsessed with this one in first grade.

I had almost all of these as a kid. don't have any of tghem anymore :(

secret weapon of the sneetches book = THE ZAX

i love reading fox in sox more than my kids like hearing it.

as far as cartoon adaptations, the sneetches is pretty incredible

the old cat in the hat tv adaptation, with allan sherman as the voice of the cat, is pretty awesome too. i always laughed at this exchange:

fish: OUT! OUT! OUT OF THIS HOUSE! and take those things with you!
cat: take the things? but who ever heard of a house without things?

it doesn't read as very funny, but the cat's fake-bewilderment in the second line really put it across.

i don't really own any of these anymore either, which kinda bums me out. all those other early-ish books that are just filled with one weird creature after another like 'on beyond zebra,' 'if i ran the zoo,' 'if i ran the circus,' etc., were probably my favorites.

but i might vote for 'i had trouble in getting to solla sollew' because in my memory it seems so LONG and epic, like a tolstoy novel or something.

scrambled eggs super, cause im named PETER

I really need revisit some of these. Next time I'm at a bookstore I'll try to read through a few of them

I remember buying my older sister 'On Beyond Zebra' as a highschool graduation present instead of 'Oh, the Places You'll Go' because she was really into zebras at the time. Turns out that it is an amazing book of creatures.

also I would like to give recognition to 4 other books which he wrote but did not illustrate:

I Wish That I Had Duck Feet (1965 under penname Theo. LeSieg)
Daisy-Head Mayzie - (published after his death)
My Many Colored Days - (published after his death)
Hooray for Diffendoofer Day! - (the book is based on verses and sketches created by Seuss before his death in 1991, and was expanded to book length and completed by writer Prelutsky and illustrator Smith for publication in 1998.)

I always liked the story that Marvin K. Mooney Will You Please Go Now! was about Richard Nixon. Richard M Nixon will you please go now?

this poll should be back on top of the New Answers imo

GE&H

I have a special place in my haert for that book as I accidently stole it from pre-school

Solla Sollew easy, so glad to see it getting love from other people here! Such a great little Bildungsroman in lurid colors with great names. Also love how pathetic the protagonist is with each new disaster, like when he/she wakes up from his dream of being in Solla Sollew, only to be in a house that's falling off a cliff due to flash flooding.

Plus the PERILOUS POOZERS OF POMPELMOOSE PASS:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_aQpgCKWXbrU/SAkZGZ6qiMI/AAAAAAAAAN8/eiar0X3m16Q/s1600/solla%2Bsollew%2Bhigh%2Bgrade.jpgp

Also, for some reason this always lodged in my memory (might not be 100% right:

"We're sorry to say that our driver, Butch Myers
has run over four nails and punctured all tires
So until further notice, bus 532
Cannot possibly take you to Solla Sollew
On the banks of the beautiful river Wa-Hoo
Where they never have troubles, at least very few.
But I wish you a most pleasant journey by feet
Signed, Bus Line President Horace P. Sweet."

So I went on by feet, thanks to Horace P. Sweet
And that Horace P. Sweet almost ruined my feet!

500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins!!
Yes yes yes.

so hard as so much great stuff there, voting Green Eggs and Ham tho as i still keep my old copy on my bedside table

rawrrrr

Torn b/w McElligot's Pool & the Sneetches

http://whatladder.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/pale-green-pants.jpg?w=301&h=303

the latter b/c of this, primarily ^^

this poll should be back on top of the New Answers imo

― you doesn't hasta call me johnson (CaptainLorax), Thursday, August 12, 2010 11:47 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark

surprising that a lorax would feel this way

i voted for if i ran the circus cuz i have read it to both kids 5 zillion times and i never get tired of it. so fun to read out loud. um, they all are, but that one especially.

http://parkhowell.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Circus-McKurcus1.jpg

calling Gerald McBoing-Boing to this thread

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

oobleck, lorax.

i think oobleck would make a crazy-good movie.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

damn Cat in the Hat shit the bed

What? I was just in Springfield walking around the Dr. Suess statues, very cool.

I see nobody mentioned the wonderful Seuss iPhone apps. They're cool.

I couldn't vote for one of the books that had only elementary school vocabulary

too advanced?

http://superitch.com/?p=11735

'bartholomew and the oobleck,' in my memory, is super-ominous, like a george romero film or something.

this impression might not survive a reread.

No, I think it's kinda there.

'bartholomew and the oobleck,' in my memory, is super-ominous, like a george romero film or something.

Was obsessed with it in first grade. With my Fisher Price castle and royal court I used to pretend my king, magician, prime minister, etc were the ones from the book.

There should be a thread devoted entirely to Fisher Price castles.

just read 'solla sollew' for the first time since i was, like, 9. i'd forgotten the part where he's stuck in a long, dark tunnel filled with 'birds all walking the wrong way,' which i'm pretty sure influenced my nightmares for years.

that sounds horrible! and awesome!

"wocket in my pocket" is great. it's like a condensed version of every great dr seuss book.

Got a small collection of these for the kids. Some of them are a delight to read, some of them are delightfully short, some of them are a dreadful slog. Large gender imbalance in most of them but that is true for every children's book ever, yea even unto 2019 ;_;

Search: The Lorax, The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, Fox in Socks.
Tolerable: Red Fish Blue Fish (patchy & disjointed), Oh The Places You'll Go (swings from wildly optimistic to heavy downer), There's a Wocket in my Pocket, Mr Brown Can Moo, Can You?
Destroy: The Grinch (humbug), Horton Hears a Who (oh my god how long is this thing, go to sleep already), The Cat in the Hat Comes Back ('Kill snow spots with pop guns? That just could not be!' - kid otm).

destroy: oh the places you'll go, which is the picture book version of all those inspirational listicles by "content strategists" about how you can do anything (ANYTHING!) if you just quit your job, adopt the right attitude, and start focusing on your goals (blah blah blah).

? there are a bunch of pages about how failure is inevitable and you will have to spend a lot of time doing dumb shit like waiting around endlessly etc.

imo the best ones are the not-so-narrative fantasist ones that are basically just a bunch of funny drawings: If I Ran the Circus, If I Ran the Zoo, On Beyond Zebra, McElligot's Pool, the Sleep Book, Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are (ie, the most Jewish Dr. Seuss book eva imo)

the lorax is clearly the best one, and it's getting sadder by the day.

glad to see i already posted the Horace P. Sweet passage of Solla Sollew upthread

'bartholomew and the oobleck,' in my memory, is super-ominous, like a george romero film or something.

this impression might not survive a reread.

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Monday, June 6, 2011 11:09 PM (eight years ago)

i have reread this book since and yeah, i was right the first time, this book is scary as fuck

? there are a bunch of pages about how failure is inevitable and you will have to spend a lot of time doing dumb shit like waiting around endlessly etc.

― Οὖτις, Thursday, October 24, 2019 8:01 PM (one hour ago)

huh i guess i'd better read this one again! all i remember is "kid you'll move mountains" and stuff like that.

huh I never found it scary, loved it as a kid. Found the karmic retribution angle of it appealing.

As a kid, Solla Selew and Lucky were my favourites. There are spreads in the latter that are like de Chirico paintings. Oobleck was nicely ominous. The pants with nobody inside them scared the living shit out of me.

Green eggs and ham can eat my shorts.

The pants with nobody inside them scared the living shit out of me.

lol me too

yeah oobleck is doomy.... i remember being unsettled by the dangerous power of the wizards or wise men or whatever once they're foolishly called into action. its vibe is not that of a kids' picture book from 1949.

seuss noir, maybe

I see there was only one vote for Horton Hears a Who, and there were even a couple of posts mocking it. I think it's a wonderful parable about compassion of the strong for the weak, loyalty, honesty, and courage in the face of derision. I'm a big Suess stan and I'd be hard pressed to pick an absolute favorite, but Horton sticks with me for reasons other than catchy rhymes or fun, outlandish illustrations. It's a deep course in ethics and morality brought to a child's level of simplicity.

i'm ruler, said yertle, of all that i see.
but i don't see enough. that's the trouble with me.

with this stone for a throne, i look down on my pond
but i cannot look down on the places beyond.

^^^ ahab shit

i remember being unsettled by the dangerous power of the wizards ... or whatever ... its vibe is not that of ... 1949

you sure

the lorax is clearly the best one, and it's getting sadder by the day.

otm, 50 years worth of evidence that someone like you caring a whole awful lot is not going to cut it.

damn, those yertle lines are great - i should reread that one.

and wow fair point on 1949.

the pants with nobody inside them scared the living shit out of me.

Scarier than Ballard!

*sideeye at universe*

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaqKPRxxaSk

Also!

https://variety.com/2019/scene/news/ellen-degeneres-green-eggs-ham-dr-seuss-rapper-1203391480/

Resembles Seuss in the way Velveeta resembles cheese. It's over-processed, artificially colored, and much blander.

you can definitely rap the majority of Seuss' output (I have done this to annoy my kids on occasion - the cadences are all built into the rhyme schemes)

did a character seriously just start to call another character a "son of a..." in an adaptation of a dr seuss story? that strikes me as a really crass and needless violation of the spirit of the original story (aimed at very, very young readers), and it's especially jarring given the gloopy "isn't this magical" tone of the narrator's voice.

has there been a single dr seuss movie or cartoon made since his death that wasn't awful? i remember all the old adaptations fondly -- the chuck jones grinch of course, the lorax cartoon from the 70s.

all the modern adaptations are awful

they all seem to be made by people who've never read the books

I think the central problem is that most of the books cannot bear the weight of plot/characterization/running time required by a film. To make them work narratively in that format requires introducing a bunch of stuff that's not in the source material, and once anyone besides Dr. Seuss starts doing that, it turns to shit because their ideas are bad/incongruous.

^ bingo! (i.e. otm)

adaptations will continue to be made, however poorly, if only because Dr. Seuss's name is such a sellable commodity, even when it is pasted onto crap he never wrote or approved.

Horton Hear’s A Who is an above average film film from 3008

*Hears

*2008

I shouldn’t post when I’m on my phone

*film film

i'm glad they at least stopped trying to do live-action seuss movies after that horrifying mike myers thing

I know what I'm spending my stimulus check on

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2380057.m570.l1311&_nkw=and+to+think+that+i+saw+it+on+mulberry+street&_sacat=0

teachers finally find a way to afford classroom libraries: selling dusty old c-list seuss books at inflated prices to outraged conservatives

(to be clear I absolutely hope they do that)

found one of these this morning and put it straight up on ebay, already bid north of $300, its like another stimulus

thank u cancel culture, cancel everything and make me rich pls

only thing i'm having 2nd thoughts about now is it just occurred to me that one of these lunatics is going to find out my home address, oh well

lmao i think there may be some at my parents old house

That is amazing.

Looking at those poll results, Horton Hatches the Egg was robbed. I'm not a big Seuss fan but that book is beautiful imo.

"And it should be, it should be, it SHOULD be like that!" makes me tear up every time.

I just told a friend of mine who kept a pretty big Seuss collection after their son got older and he said (re: Mulberry) "oh shit, I threw that out because of the racism when the kid was a baby".

big money to be made selling bootleg racist Seuss books at gun shows and conservative forums

(Carrie Bradshaw voice:) So I had to wonder, were racist books the new cryptocurrency?

So I talked my friend into listing "Scrambled Eggs Super" yesterday as it was the only one of the set he still had and it was in good condition. Got up to $157 last night, and then Ebay decided to pull all auctions for these books due to their racist imagery. I'm quite confident much worse things continue to be sold on ebay.

i'm seeing 51 up right now!

(Carrie Bradshaw voice:) So I had to wonder, were racist books the new cryptocurrency?

― Lily Dale, Wednesday, March 3, 2021 11:13 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

lmao goddammit

yeah there are a ton still up

they could just remove the offending images/pages and republish, that's what they do with Richard Scarry books.

my auction somehow slipped through the cracks and closed, lets just say we're going to be cancelling some really nice steaks and fancy scotch at the OEO house this weekend

so the path to riches in 2021 is old Dr. Seuss books and Gamestop stock, makes sense

Another fan of "Horton Hatches the Egg" here, also the not dissimilar "Thidwick".

Also can't forget the "ABC" book, with its Feffer-Feffer-Feff and Zizzer-Zazzer-Zuzz.

When folks (myself included) talk too much about how they would run an organization or something else they haven't done before, I call it If I Ran The Zoo.

I always think of this very old Onion article but that's a great angle. Given that that book is one of the ones pulled, I may start using If I Ran The Circus for my own use.

using...use...

Last night I read The Cat in the Hat for the first time to my four-year-old son. The cat in the hat is a total dick!!

I read a lot of them for the first time as an adult - my wife has lots.

My favourite is ABC - Oscar’s only ostrich oiled an orange owl today.

lol my wife put a sticker on that page so it reads "Oscar's only ostrich oiled an orange DUDE! today"

yeah the Cat is a monumental asshole. he just shows up and fucking ruins everything.

in that way he is like every cat I have ever had

i don't really own any of these anymore either, which kinda bums me out. all those other early-ish books that are just filled with one weird creature after another like 'on beyond zebra,' 'if i ran the zoo,' 'if i ran the circus,' etc., were probably my favorites.

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Thursday, August 12, 2010 12:16 AM (ten years ago)

even more bummed out now that i realize that i had ten years to buy copies of these books and never did!

I didnt grow up with these boks but having kids made me discover them. I love them so much. I would have voted for One Fish Two Fish which still cracks me up every time. Some creepiness too, eg
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.

One of my favourite pages!

His curly little teeth! The liquid he lives in!

Same – never read them, love reading them to my daughter. She is two – very into “I can read with my eyes shut”, which is just the right length, and has just the right amount of nonsense. Will definitely check out the fish book.

Last night I read The Cat in the Hat for the first time to my four-year-old son. The cat in the hat is a total dick!!

― Mr. Snrub, Friday, 5 March 2021 00:35 (eight months ago) bookmarkflaglink

otm

yup a very specific kind of careless dickishness (somewhat redeemed by the fact that he does clean up his mess eventually)

I must have gotten The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins out of the library 20 times as a kid. It was a big dark hardcover and with the cursed hat story seemed to lil' me, like, I dunno, The Necronomicon.

lol i had the same experience with that book

Bartholomew and the Oobleck is the one that really got to me with its dark doominess, pretty sure i've posted about that before.

the moral of the Sneetches isn't that classism/prejudice was solved, just that the stoner dude driving the star machine gave everybody indeterminate numbers of stars on their belly so everybody just gave the fuck up

probably a week later they moved onto something else to hate each other over.

The Cat in the Hat is the friend who asked to borrow your cd in high school, and promised he wasn't gonna be irresponsible with it, and it came back in pieces with drawings all over it, and no jewel case or liner notes