Seuss, Dr. What Pet Should I Get? New York: Random House Children’s Books, 2015. Print.This title will be of great interest to children’s literature specialists and researchers. The end notes tell us that in 1991, when Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss) died, the manuscript was left in a box of his studio projects. His widow, Audrey, and former secretary, Claudia Prescott, discovered it in the fall of 2013. The manuscript comprised line drawings to which pieces of paper containing potential text had been attached. In some instances, multiple versions of text had been taped on top of each other.Cathy Goldsmith, Seuss’s art director for the last eleven years of his life, surmises that Seuss began the book between 1958 and 1962. If she is correct, Seuss was by this time a very well established figure in children’s literature, having had success with such treasures as And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street (1937); The 500 Hats of Bartholemew Cubbins (1938); Horton Hatches the Egg (1940); and How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1957).Seuss had ventured into writing for children after a very successful career as a cartoonist. (In particular, his design of advertisements had proven lucrative.) Beginning in the late 1950s, however, his artistic and literary talents were to be employed in yet another direction, the Beginner Books that Random House would publish to foster reading interest among children in their primary school years. The challenge was to create an interesting picture book using the controlled vocabulary (200 to 300 very basic words) of the “Dick, Jane and Baby Sally” variety of primer. Seuss was up for the challenge. Certainly, The Cat in the Hat, also 1957, had astonishing success in this regard. It may well be that What Pet Should I Get? was another such attempt. In any case, its story line is simple: two children in a pet store face the dilemma of selecting just one of the vast array of adorable possibilities.Goldsmith and the editors at Random House have done their best to create the book Seuss might have intended. They have made decisions about not only which lines of text might best suit his drawings, but also the color palette he might have selected, the position and nature of the font, and so forth. The end result is mixed in terms of its literary impact. The drawings are pure Seuss; his signature is all over them. The color palette is, arguably, what he might have chosen. The text, however, is dull. It never lifts from the page—possibly because Seuss felt he must restrict his vocabulary choices. THEN . . . I saw a new kind! And they were good, too! How could I pick one? Now what should we do? We could only pick one. That is what my dad said, Now how could I make up that mind in my head? (page 18, unnumbered) This is scarcely lively, engaging Seuss. When he was at his best, his writing maintained a consistent beat, a measured foot, and, often, an internal rhyme. He repeated, distorted and created words in the cause of a rollicking rhythm. Consider this stanza describing the fiendish Grinch in flight with the holiday loot that he has stolen from Whoville. Three thousand feet up! Up the side of Mt. Crumpit, He rode with his load to the tiptop to dump it! “Pooh-Pooh to the Whos!” he was grinch-ish-ly humming. “They’re finding out now that no Christmas is coming! “They’re just waking up! I know just what they’ll do! “Their mouths will hang open a minute or two “Then the Whos down in Who-ville will all cry BOO-HOO!The passage simply spirits the reader along. Sadly, What Pet Should I Get? does not contain this kind of writing. Still, we must treasure the manuscript. It gives us insight into the artist at work: what he envisioned, how he began, what he decreed to be finished or not. This early draft of What Pet Should I Get? was probably not quite what Seuss had hoped it would be. It was not perfect. It was not finished. He set it aside. The inescapable conclusion is that he, who gave much to his readers, demanded much of himself.Rating: Not applicable in this caseReviewer: Leslie AitkenLeslie Aitken’s long career in librarianship involved selection of children’s literature for school, public, special, and university collections. She is a former Curriculum Librarian at the University of Alberta.
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