Dr. Seuss Extravaganza

After reading Horton Hears a Who! for my book versus film blog, I felt that reading The Cat in the Hat and The Lorax would be a simple enough task. It had been years since I had picked up any Dr. Seuss book, and to be honest, I wondered when I read these three books why Dr. Seuss is so popular with children. His popularity, to me, should lie with adults moreso than children, due to his overwhelmingly apparent subtext and analogies.

There is a little The Cat in the Hat in all of us. We all wish we had a friend who showed up when our parents were not around and encouraged us to be as bad as we want to be. However, sooner or later, our responsible-side must reappear and get us grounded back to reality. Children still love this book because of its sing-song rhyme pattern and familiar graphics, but I am curious to know that even after one reads this book to children if he or she would ask the children what the book was about if the children could tell the reader. Several other books have this same appeal to children; books such as Peter Pan have that same appeal to children, but again, if someone asks the children what the book was about, I doubt most children would understand the complex analogies the author James Barrie is trying to make.

What a wonderful book The Lorax is. I must admit, I do not remember reading this book as a child, but as an adult, I loved everything about it. Yes, the ever-present Dr. Seuss rhyming "fun" is present yet again, but there is a level of sophistication and adult-appeal that I do not always feel with Dr. Seuss that I definitely felt while reading The Lorax. There is a deeper truth here, discussing the horrible effects of deforestation. Teachers and parents could use this children's book in a discussion with their children about nature and humanity's desire to tear down the rain forests. In my experiences with children's books, I felt this same didactic nature when I read Flotsam by David Wiesner; the feeling was for a different reason, but again, the book could be used to appreciate the past, to gain a sense of a world larger than one's self, and to see ourselves as a part of a much larger picture.


Nate Smith