Caveat Lector

As regular readers (all 3 of you!) know, I'm a purist.  I don't like it when books are "updated" or abridged or adapted.  And so I went through the school library and got rid of all the "classic starts" books, and anything that was "based on" the books of another author and so on and so forth.  But those publishers can be tricky.  Sometimes it's hard to spot a modified book and I was recently horrified to discover one on... my own bookshelf.  (dum dum DUM.)

A kindergarten class was doing an author study on Dr. Seuss and asked me to read a Dr. Seuss book of my choosing during their library period.  I happily picked There's A Wocket in My Pocket, which I used to sing to my own children, and proceeded to happily embarass myself by singing the book to the kindergarteners.  Except I was tripping over my words because, while they were similar, they were not identical to the version I'd always sung to my own kids.

Which was the original and which was the impostor?  It took some close reading to find out.  I'd been reading the board book all these years, which I'm pretty sure we'd acquired as a gift or a hand-me-down, not as an original purchase.  Turns out, the board book had been "adapted" from the original.

Original

Board book version

But here's the thing: I like the board book version better.  (Horrors!) The rhymes work better and the ending is sweeter and less wordy.  Is it just a matter of what we're used to?  (Or maybe just what I'm used to?)  Who knows? But I'm bringing in my own board book version the next time I plan to sing this book to a class.

Dr. Seuss Exhibit, Updated

I went to see the exhibit of Dr. Seuss's hats  at the Children's Center at 42nd Street, located in the Stephen A. Schwarzman building on Fifth Avenue, known to my children as the "wide library," the other day.  My 5-year-old refused to go and it was just as well.  The exhibit consisted of one display case with the dozen hats.  As I had suspected, it was certainly more interesting to adults than to children!   I took a few pictures before being reprimanded and told not to do so.  I hadn't seen the tiny sign forbidding it - honest!

The Children's Center itself, however, as I may have mentioned before, contains a beautiful mural of New York City landmarks, including the Schwarzman building itself.  Note it is not drawn to scale and landmarks that are next to each other on the mural are not necessarily next to each other in reality.  The Children's Center also contains the real stuffed animals upon which the Winnie-the Pooh stories were based, which are also  probably of interest to adults more so than to kids.

Have you been to the Children's Center?  I want to get around to taking one of the free tours of the Schwarzman building, with its lion motifs throughout.  

The One Dozen Hats of Dr. Seuss

There is a new exhibit at the NYPL of a dozen hats that actually belonged to Dr. Seuss himself!  An article in the New York Times gives more details about the exhibit which will be on view only through next Monday February 11!  I wish the exhibit lasted longer and was bigger!  Dr. Seuss apparently had hundreds of hats and I wonder why only such a small fraction will be on view.  The hats were an inspiration for many books, particularly the The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins, which is the one place I think fewer hats would have been better.  That book needed a little more editing... 100 hats would have been enough!

The Dr. Seuss Dichotomy

My mom never liked Dr. Seuss books and so I've always had a bias against them.  But now my almost-five-year-old's preschool class is studying them and I'm developing a new appreciation for at least some of them.  She came home thrilled after they read Horton Hatches the Egg, repeating "An elephant's faithful, 100 percent!" ad nauseum.  But she explained to me she didn't like the Dr. Seuss books that are "just rhyming" like Fox in Socks.  Although she didn't have the vocabulary to express it, she likes books with plot.  (This might explain why she has a general aversion to poetry but makes an exception for narrative poetry, like Emma Dilemma: Big Sister Poems.)

This school unit exposed me to a Dr. Seuss book I wasn't familiar with (to be honest, he was so prolific that I am always discovering new ones): Please Try to Remember the First of Octember!  A parent keeps promising his child outlandish things... but not until "the first of Octember."  I don't think my daughter quite got the joke that the first of Octember would never come and therefore the parent would never have to make good on his promise, but I did and it amused me!  I also like I Am Not Going to Get Up Today! although the rhyme scheme peters out at the ending, and my kids love finding all the "wacky" things in Wacky Wednesday.  As for the "just rhyming" books, I have a soft spot for There's a Wocket in My Pocket! since I used to sing it to my older daughter.  It's rollicking rhythm just lends itself to song.  And how could I not like it after she told me that I'm her "zillow" because "the zillow on my pillow always helps me fall asleep"?

What is your favorite Dr. Seuss book?