Seuss v. Silverstein. Silverstein TKO.

Since having my son, I'm a little more sensitive about the reading material that comes into my home. And after yesterday's reading time, this is what I've decided: If Seuss and Silverstein were in a writer-type rumble, Suess would be down for the count in the first round. Maybe it's just been a while since I've hatched open his Green Eggs and held him accountable for his Red Fish and Two Fish, but when I started reading it to my son (Right: He's only three months. It's fine.), I was a little concerned he would mistake this for English. I don't see anything wrong with the occasional nonsense word (with words like dushikabushi being tossed around my childhood home as an expression of frustration, I fully understand the fun in it).





But let's consider the book only had about eight words to start with. As a writer, I hoped he would at least pretend he tried. Maybe rhyme a few real words before mailing in a whole stock of ones he made up.

And this went on for book after book. Story after story. Thing 2 after Thing 1. What a freaking racket. I'd get boo'd out of my industry if I jammed up my advertising jingles with that unabashed jibberish. And yet I can't deny having a brief "why didn't I think of that?" moment.

So what of Silverstein's nutty cast of characters? I get it. There's no mistaking the mushroom garden this dude was probably harvesting to brainstorm peanut-butter-eating pirates and detached heads on unicycles. But God, at least he kept it relatively under wraps. He teaches the kids to rhyme real words before he teaches them to use their imagination. To think before they think bigger. Shows them the sidewalk before proposing it could end in a real cliff hanger. And that's how the world works, isn't it? In any instance, you can't put your bat-crap-crazy foot first. You've got to earn your way to crazy. So there. And Thanks, Shel, for showing the kids how it's done.

Love,
Mom

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