One of those timeless prophetic books which can be read and appreciated on many levels. Our copy is rather battered for being much-loved. It offers a warning but not without hope. Good to pull down off the shelf and read again from time-to-time.

fat orange bitch

Mohana read this to me. I only listened halfway. Thneed is the most awful word i have ever heard. Need to read again when im not death tired

Como ya lo he dicho en otra ocasión, no había podido conseguir las obras del Dr. Seuss y por eso me había tenido que conformar con ver las adaptaciones de las mismas.

De tal modo que, aún con esta historia, el caso fue exactamente igual. La película añade muchos personajes ―entre los cuales está el «villano sucesor», por decirlo de una manera―, brinda un rostro al «Fue-una-vez» y su familia, añade las canciones, pero, en la estética...

El resto del escrito se encuentra en mi blog: https://jsaaopinionpersonal.wordpress...

The work of Dr. Seuss has been such a formative influence in my reading life, playing such an important role, not just in my childhood reading, but in the process whereby I learned to read in the first place, that I find it very difficult to subject it to analysis. I must have read every single one of his picture-books countless times as a child (with the notable exception of n  The Seven Lady Godivas: The True Facts Concerning History's Barest Familyn, which I only discovered as an adult), but although I have reviewed many books online, this is my first Seuss listing - my first attempt to grapple with the enormous appeal and influence of this brilliant poet and artist.

I will say that I was struck, during my latest reread - courtesy of our April theme for the Picture Book Club I belong to - by how effortless it all seems. How easy Seuss makes it look! Just read it, and see how it rolls off the tongue:

"Way back in the days when the grass was still green
and the pond was still wet
and the clouds were still clean,
and the songs of the Swomme-Swans rang out in space...
one morning, I came to this glorious place.
And I first saw the trees!
The Truffula Trees!
The bright-colored tufts of the Truffula Trees!
Mile after mile in the fresh morning breeze."

This is a narrative that just begs to be read aloud! Its rhythm is simply perfect, with its flawless balance and its building excitement. Its vocabulary - the Once-ler's "gruvvulous glove," and "Whisper-ma-Phone," the Lorax's "cruffulous croak," due to the "smogulous smoke" - is humorous, inventive, and somehow, completely real. The artwork is pure genius - comical, simple, yet immensely evocative, brightly-colored, save when it isn't. In a word: Seuss!

And somehow, it all comes together - the rolling narrative, the clever word-play, the eye-grabbing illustrations - in a book that feels natural. Simple. Effortless. The fact that Dr. Seuss can convince me, every time I read his books, that it is effortless, when I know it isn't, when I know that it takes immense skill and hard work, is proof of his genius! That The Lorax, a cautionary tale which warns of the danger of abusing our precious natural resources and environment, is as topical today as when it was first penned, is a testament, not just to the continuing relevance of the issue, but to the fact that Seuss is, bar none, the best picture-book author/artist of all time.

One of my favorite Dr. Seuss Books. The kids loved it too

Re-read, love this one.

Might just have to buy a physical copy

I didn't think I'd read this one, but as I turned the pages, the memories started to come back to me. It was the Brown Bar-ba-loots that stuck in my head for some reason...

In any case, this is a rather modern-sounding tale about conservation. It's just as appropriate for today's audiences as it would have been when it was first published. The Lorax contains a story within a story told by a mysterious character called the Once-ler, who tells of a time when Truffula Trees grew plentiful, supplying the Brown Bar-ba-loots with shade and food. But the Once-ler figures out that he can knit with the tufts of the Truffula Trees, and this spells the end of the natural paradise. A creature called the Lorax, who speaks for the trees, warns the Once-ler that he's doing harm... but the Once-ler cares only about money.

I found the writing in this a bit iffy, and the meter isn't as strong as it is in some of Dr. Seuss's other books. Still, the message is important enough that I'm willing to overlook some of these issues.

The story ends with a bit of hope, but the depiction of what happens from unchecked industry and greed is bleak. It's definitely a timely tale, and one that is perfectly appropriate--necessary, even--for today's kids.

Quotable moment:

n  n

January 2015

A one-paragraph review of a children's book I didn't like has generated more trolls and their inevitable sock puppet alteregos than any other of my reviews, I've lost count of the number of them. I delete some of their comments, some delete their own (and their profiles), some GR do. But what is there about this review or about the book that generates this kind of over-the-top reaction from obviously mentally-unstable individuals?
_____

Maybe I'm just not a Dr. Seuss person but I hated this book. Boring story, stupid words that didn't entertain and even though it was meant for a child rather than me, my son hardly ever looked at it growing up, so its sits on the shelf still quite pristine.

Funny thing is that this is only a comment on a kiddies' book - yet it has engendered so much nastiness from several people all of whom appear to be alteregos of Michael. He has made it his business to take people (not me alone) to task for not enjoying this book even to the extent of making personal remarks. He himself enjoys it so much he's made a society (IRL not virtually) to promote its aims as thought it were a kind of bible. Luckily the other reviewers are more rational and measured in their response and don't feel the need to make rude personal remarks. Each to his own. This isn't for me.

May 2010

I was just looking through my reviews and noticed that Corky and two other characters (the same person?) have deleted their reviews and their IDs. Interesting.....

The Lorax still speaks for the trees; and thank heaven he does, because his message has never been more relevant. Written in 1971 – two years after the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland caught fire; one year after the first celebration of Earth Day – Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax conveys a desperately needed environmentalist message to a world that may, or may not, care to listen.

Dull greys, browns, and purples predominate in the book’s early pages: a small boy negotiates his way through a bleak landscape where “the wind smells slow-and-sour when it blows/and no birds ever sing excepting old crows” (p. 1). The boy follows the Street of the Lifted Lorax in search of a story that he knows he needs to hear. His informant, the Once-ler, is well-named; Dr. Seuss takes the reassuring “Once upon a time” that traditionally begins a children’s story, and gives it a menacing edge.

The Once-ler, who, in another splendid example of Dr. Seuss’s talent for evocative coinages, “lurks in his Lerkim” outside of town, will tell the story of the Lorax, “perhaps…/if you’re willing to pay” (p. 4). Once the toll has been paid and checked for correctness – “fifteen cents/and a nail/and the shell of a great-great-great-/grandfather snail” (p. 6) – he will tell you the story, “for the secrets I tell are for your ears alone” (p. 9).

We have given our coins to Charon, the ferryman of the River Styx, and it is time for our descent into the abyss. In The Lorax, as in many of his books, Dr. Seuss evokes the archetypes of classical myth; but this time, that subtext is linked with an environmentalist message, and comes through with particular clarity. We enter a new kind of Hades, a modern world-of-the-dead, and learn how and why it died.

We never see the Once-ler’s face – only his green arms that may or may not symbolize “the green” that so many people spend their lives pursuing. In the flashback narrative that takes up the major portion of The Lorax, the Once-ler arrives in an earthly paradise for which Dr. Seuss immediately switches to a brightly coloured palette – greens, blues, oranges, yellows, and pinks: colours found in nature. The most notable features of this Edenic landscape are “The bright-colored tufts of the Truffula Trees!/Mile after mile in the fresh morning breeze” (p. 12).

The Once-ler calls it a “glorious place” (p. 12) because of the beauty of the landscape – land animals called Bar-ba-loots enjoying the fruit of the Truffula Trees; Humming-Fish swimming happily in the pond; Swomer-Swans singing joyously as they fly overhead. Yet the Once-ler focuses on the commercial opportunity that the Truffula Trees present: “The touch of their tufts/was much softer than silk./And they had the sweet smell/of fresh butterfly milk” (p. 16).

The Once-ler chops down a Truffula Tree, knits from it an object called a Thneed, and by that means causes the first appearance of the Lorax – a character that has become so famous in so many media that it was refreshing to see the character again in the book where he first came to life so many years ago, to meet him anew. In Dr. Seuss’s words, “He was shortish. And oldish./And brownish. And mossy./And he spoke with a voice/that was sharpish and bossy” (p. 21).

In his sharpish, bossy voice, the Lorax quickly pronounces a set of lines that once propelled him into his own state of Seussian immortality, right alongside the Grinch and the Cat in the Hat: “I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees./I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues” (p. 23). More to the point, the Lorax has an eminently practical question for the Once-ler: "What’s that THING you’ve made out of my Truffula tuft?" (p. 23)

Undaunted, the Once-ler proudly proclaims the merits of his all-new, all-purpose consumer product, the Thneed: “A Thneed’s a Fine-Something-That-All-People Need!/It’s a shirt. It’s a sock. It’s a glove./It’s a hat./But it has other uses. Yes, far beyond that./You can use it for carpets. For pillows! For sheets!/Or curtains! Or covers for bicycle seats!” (p. 24) The Thneed, of course, is a perfect emblem for modern marketing in our consumerist society. You don’t sell people something that they already need; rather, you invent a product that no one really needs, and then create the need for it.

NOW how much would you pay? But wait! There’s still more! Operators are standing by!

The Lorax’s assessment that the Once-ler is “crazy with greed” (p. 24) is accurate; sadly, his belief that “There is no one on earth/who would buy that fool Thneed!” (p. 24) is not. Some person comes along and purchases the first Thneed for $3.98. (That’s in 1971 prices, mind you; in adjusted dollars, today a Thneed would set you back $23.95 or so.) The Once-ler, flush with his initial success, smugly notes that “You never can tell what some people will buy” (p. 26).

Dismissing the Lorax’s attempts to speak for the trees with a brusque “I’m busy….Shut up, if you please” (p. 29), the Once-ler calls in his whole family; and quicker than you can say “new markets,” the Once-ler family factory is rapidly expanding, turning out an ever-growing number of Thneeds. Making more Thneeds, of course, involves cutting down more Truffula Trees; and the relentlessly enterprising Once-ler swiftly devises a “Super-Axe-Hacker/which whacked off four Truffula Trees at one smacker” (p. 33), quadrupling the rate of Thneed production.

This seems as good a place as any to mention that the annual rate of Amazon rainforest deforestation has been as high as 10,588 square miles of rainforest per year – an area roughly the size of my home state of Maryland. The Amazon rainforest generates 20 percent of the world’s oxygen. I mention these facts only for the benefit of those readers who might assume that nothing like the events of The Lorax is happening in real life.

Meanwhile, back in the (theoretically) fictional world of The Lorax, the environmental impact of Thneedism is felt quickly. The Brown Bar-ba-loots, the land animals that fed upon Truffula Fruits, have nothing to eat, and the Lorax must send them away in hopes of finding a new home where they will not starve. The Once-ler suffers a momentary pang of remorse, but then soothes his conscience by reflecting that “business is business!/And business must grow/regardless of crummies in tummies, you know” (p. 37). A man’s gotta make a livin’. How much harm has that tired old rationalization already done? How much more harm will it do in the future?

The air and water suffer as the land has suffered; and the sweet-voiced Swomer-Swans must follow the Brown Bar-ba-loots out of their homeland and into an uncertain future. So must the once-happy Humming-Fish; their water hopelessly polluted by the grotesque by-products of the Thneed-industrial complex, they must “walk on their fins and get woefully dreary/in search of some water that isn’t so smeary” (p. 47). Dr. Seuss, always gentle in his consideration of the children who were and are his primary audience, glides over the fact that most fish (aside from species like the snakehead and the walking catfish) don’t have the option of “walking on their fins”; they just remain in the polluted water, swimming until they die.

No spoiler alert will be required, I trust, if I state that the Once-ler’s dedication to “biggering,” growing his business bigger and bigger, results in environmental disaster; the Once-ler’s family leaves him, waving as they drive away in their matching “You Need a Thneed”-mobiles, and the saddened Lorax ascends upward “through a hole in the smog, without leaving a trace” (p. 55), leaving behind him only “a small pile of rocks, with the one word…/’UNLESS’” (p. 56). Finally stricken with real remorse, the Once-ler tells the boy who has come to hear the story that “UNLESS someone like you/cares a whole awful lot,/nothing is going to get better./It’s not” (p. 58). The story ends on a note of guarded optimism, with the Once-ler giving the boy a gift that has the potential to change things for the better.

Reputedly Dr. Seuss's favourite among all his books, The Lorax covers a lot of ground in 61 pages. There have, of course, been TV and movie versions of The Lorax – the 1972 animated TV special narrated by Eddie Albert, and the 2012 computer-animated feature film with Zac Efron, Taylor Swift, Betty White, and Danny DeVito as the Lorax. But I hope that those adaptations will lead people back to Dr. Seuss’s original book, which has a power of its own. I only wonder whether, in later years, The Lorax will be read as a warning that was heeded in time – or as an epitaph.

Has nobody read this book? All these years and we are still chopping down trees, creating loads of pollution and happily killing off animals.

This has to be Dr. Seuss's most serious book, he tones down the silliness and tries to get across his warning. The illustrations are wonderful, the start is so bleak and drab, all shades of grey and once the story gets told the colours are so vivid they jump out of the page at you, only for you to watch the grey come back as the trees get cut down.

Wonderful story telling with a powerful message.

*Review from my eight year old*

I like this book because of the storyline. I would recomend this book for you, too. The best part that I like is when the Onceler chops down the very last Truffala tree because then he learns his lesson to not chop down nature.