In honor of James' informative comment, I have a little poll for you:
Keep in mind there is only one right answer, and it is Fox in Sox. That book rocks. If you're not cool enough to realize it, or even recognize the excellence of the other books on this list, you can look at the full catalog and submit write-ins.
4 comments:
While the nerdy (note the word usage) English teacher in me would like to give an honorable mention nod to "Oh the Places You'll Go" as a great graduation gift (given to high school graduates over and over again all the world over) I had to vote for Green Eggs and Ham...I mean, come on, "I will not eat them, Sam i am" is pure genius.
Clearly my friends don't know good literature when they see it. Fox in Sox is not winning--and should be. Perhaps I should host a reading so you can appreciate how great it is when read at mach speed. I'd even put The Lorax up before Green Eggs and Ham.
I'll object to the lack of "Hop On Pop" or even "The Foot Book". Green Eggs and Ham has to win out of these, however.
Here's more Ted Geisel trivia for you: Did you know that Green Eggs and Ham was written solely because Geisel (aka Dr. Seuss) thought children's books at the time were mundane and boring? The other early reader books were un-fun and often in the "See Dick run. Run, Dick, run. See Jane ..." The story is that he bet his publisher Bennett Cerf in 1960 that he could write a children's book, complete with plot and "fun" language with just 50 words. He bet him $50 and was to use the 50 early reader words that kids still learn today as their beginner reading words (I know because I've had to work on them on flashcards with Bryn, Scout and Allison).
Geisel won the bet with "Green Eggs and Ham". Incidentally, 49 of the words are monosyllabic. That means they consist of only one syllable -- to overteach the point -- the only multisyllabic word was "anywhere."
Lastly, Seuss wrote "The Cat In the Hat" prior to "Green Eggs and Ham" and tried to use a similar amount of beginning reader words, but fell short, using 256 different words in that story.
If you can't tell from my astonishing amount of useless knowledge on this issue, I teach a Dr. Seuss unit in every English class I teach. I use them to review or define literary terms, poetry terms, literary devices and other such fodder.
Thank you, Mr. Hatten, for that informative comment. Someday I would enjoy the full Seuss lecture.
I went back and forth on including some of the other Seuss classics such as There’s a Wocket in My Pocket, Oh the Things You Can Think, Hop on Pop, and To Think that I Saw It on Mulberry Street. But that would have made for a long poll.
Post a Comment