What Pet Should I Get?

by Dr. Seuss

Overview

A #1 New York Times bestseller!
 
This previously never-before-seen picture book by Dr. Seuss about making up one’s mind is the literary equivalent of buried treasure! What happens when a brother and sister visit a pet store to pick a pet? Naturally, they can’t choose just one! The tale captures a classic childhood moment—choosing a pet—and uses it to illuminate a life lesson: that it is hard to make up your mind, but sometimes you just have to do it!
 
Told in Dr. Seuss’s signature rhyming style, this is a must-have for Seuss fans and book collectors, and a perfect choice for the holidays, birthdays, and happy occasions of all kinds.
 
An Editor’s Note at the end discusses Dr. Seuss’s pets, his creative process, and the discovery of the manuscript and illustrations for What Pet Should I Get?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780399552212
Publisher:	Random House Children's Books
Publication date:	07/28/2015
Series:	Classic Seuss Series
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	48
File size:	28 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	3 - 7 Years

About the Author

THEODOR SEUSS GEISEL—aka Dr. Seuss—is one of the most beloved children’s book authors of all time. From The Cat in the Hat to Oh, the Places You’ll Go!, his iconic characters, stories, and art style have been a lasting influence on generations of children and adults. The books he wrote and illustrated under the name Dr. Seuss (and others that he wrote but did not illustrate, including some under the pseudonyms Theo. LeSieg and Rosetta Stone) have been translated into thirty languages. Hundreds of millions of copies have found their way into homes and hearts around the world. Dr. Seuss’s long list of awards includes Caldecott Honors for McElligot’s Pool, If I Ran the Zoo, and Bartholomew and the Oobleck, the Pulitzer Prize, and eight honorary doctorates. Works based on his original stories have won three Oscars, three Emmys, three Grammys, and a Peabody.

Date of Birth:

March 2, 1904

Date of Death:

September 4, 1991

Place of Birth:

Springfield, Massachusetts

Place of Death:

La Jolla, California

Education:

B.A., Dartmouth College, 1925; Oxford University (no degree)

Editorial Reviews

…a very good example of [Seuss's] particular genius for distilling both the spirit of his times and the timeless mind-set of children. With its galloping anapests, cockamamie creatures and kids off on an everyday adventure that turns hallucinogenic, this late arrival will slip easily into the collection that changed how Americans learn to read—Dr. Seuss books like Green Eggs and Ham, which mowed down the teacher-approved, intellectually inert Dick-and-Jane drivel that sucked the life out of early education in the 1950s…What Pet Should I Get? will remind us, delightfully, that Dr. Seuss, over half a century ago, made learning to read an adventure, a club children would actually want to belong to. And, not least, he made reading aloud something parents, too, could reliably enjoy.

The New York Times Book Review - Maria Russo

Filled with creatures both real and zany,
It shows off his gift for creating a zoo.
Two-legged, four-legged, winged and finned,
Beasties familiar and entirely new!

The New York Times - Michiko Kakutani

Rainn Wilson’s lively narration conveys excitement and suspense as two children discuss which pet to buy. Wilson’s range of tones, drawn-out sounds, and energetic bursts of words set the stage for a brother and sister’s short but exuberant discussion of the animals in a pet store. While their voices are not always well differentiated, Wilson brings out the rhyming pattern in a naturally flowing way that lends to a sense of wonder about the animals and the children’s choice of pet. The producer notes, read by Julia Whelan, are equally well delivered. With a perfect blend of reverence and sparkle, she recounts how this book came to be posthumously published 24 years after Seuss’s death, along with important issues pertaining to pets. M.F. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine

SEPTEMBER 2015 - AudioFile

Rainn Wilson’s lively narration conveys excitement and suspense as two children discuss which pet to buy. Wilson’s range of tones, drawn-out sounds, and energetic bursts of words set the stage for a brother and sister’s short but exuberant discussion of the animals in a pet store. While their voices are not always well differentiated, Wilson brings out the rhyming pattern in a naturally flowing way that lends to a sense of wonder about the animals and the children’s choice of pet. The producer notes, read by Julia Whelan, are equally well delivered. With a perfect blend of reverence and sparkle, she recounts how this book came to be posthumously published 24 years after Seuss’s death, along with important issues pertaining to pets. M.F. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine

SEPTEMBER 2015 - AudioFile

2015-07-22
Almost 25 years after the death of the great Dr. Seuss, a new book hits the market. "We want a pet. / We want a pet. / What kind of pet / should we get?" So begins the narrator and his sister's visit to a pet store, where they find themselves torn among a bevy of cute, furry creatures including cats, dogs, rabbits, and fish, as well as some "new things." As presented in the lengthy publisher's note that follows the story, this newly unearthed picture book likely dates to the late 1950s or early '60s and has been reconstructed from finished art and multiple iterations of draft revisions. The result is a far more satisfying experience than such other posthumous Seuss publications as Horton and the Kwuggerbug and More Lost Stories (2014) and The Bippolo Seed and Other Lost Stories (2011), which paired more or less finished stories with a few pieces of art. This new-old book presents a complete storyline with a pleasing balance of text and art featuring, on average, one quatrain per page. Unfortunately, it still has a fairly unfinished feel. It's hard to imagine that the notoriously finicky—admirably so—author would have been entirely happy with the occasionally lackluster and stumbling verse. Moreover, while the illustrations demonstrate an intensifying looniness, progressing from cats and dogs to Seuss' trademark, unidentifiable rubber-limbed, mop-topped creatures, the text does not keep pace. The "yent" or the "fast kind of thing / who would fly round my head / in a ring on a string" the brother considers feel like first steps toward zaniness rather than a finished artistic vision. The concluding note likewise suffers from a lack of unity, offering an earnest exhortation to eschew pet shops for shelter adoption, a survey of the dogs in Theodor Geisel's life, and the process art director Cathy Goldsmith followed in turning the newfound manuscript into a book. Of more lasting interest to scholars than children, this genial pet-shop visit provides a tantalizing glimpse into a master's artistic process. (Picture book. 3 & up)

Kirkus Reviews