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Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Would you, could you,
on a boat?

I could not, would not, on a boat.
I will not, will not, with a goat.
I will not eat them in the rain.
I will not eat them on a train.
Not in the dark! Not in a tree!
Not in a car! You let me be!


I do not like them in a box.
I do not like them with a fox.
I will not eat them in a house.
I do not like them with a mouse.
I do not like them here or there.
I do not like them ANYWHERE

I do not like
green eggs
and ham!

I do not like them,
Sam-I-am.


I found this article online and thought it was interesting.

Many of us grew up enjoying the wildly imaginative rhyming works written and illustrated by Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known to us as Dr. Seuss. Bartholomew and the Oobleck, If I Ran the Zoo, Horton Hears a Who!, How the Grinch Stole Christmas and many other books involving "ludicrous situations pursued with relentless logic" were the core of many a child's personal library. In 1957, Seuss produced a classic children's tale, The Cat in the Hat, using only the words on an average first-grader's vocabulary list. This work was followed by a series of books employing an ever more limited vocabulary: Ten Apples up on Top!, Hop on Pop, Fox in Socks, and the book that initiated this trend (and is perhaps the best known of all of Seuss' efforts), Green Eggs and Ham.
What prompted this minimalist trend by Dr. Seuss? A dare from his editor, Bennett Cerf, that he write a book using no more than fifty different words. Seuss took Cerf up on his challenge and produced a classic children's work many of us can still recite from memory.

2 comments:

  1. Are you my mother is one of my mother's favorite books. I love that one too.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Horton Hears a Who! is one of my tops. A person's a person, no matter how small....think of the implications!

    ReplyDelete

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