In Honor of Dr. Seuss’s Birthday, 11 Classics Retold In His Inimitable Style

I told you that to tell you this: Dr. Seuss—Theodore Geisel, if you prefer—was the undisputed champion of accessible storytelling, with an imagination always churning, rhyming, and yearning. To celebrate his birthday, and the recent announcement of forthcoming Seuss book What Pet Should I Get, we dreamed up a fitting hypothetical: what if Dr. Seuss wrote the plots for other famous books?
The results are in, and to quote the man himself, “youngsters and oldsters, your heads will quite likely spin right off your shouldsters.”
A Song of Ice and Fire series, by George R.R. Martin
One king, two king. Dead king, who king?
The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
He has brains in his head. He has feet in his shoes. But the ducks just keep flying wherever they choose.
The Twilight series, by Stephenie Meyers
When you’re in a slump, you’re not in for much fun. Un-slumping yourself requires sparkling in the sun.
The Complete Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan Doyle
Unless a consulting detective knows a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get solved. It’s not.
1984, by George Orwell
I am Big Brother. I speak for the proles. I speak for the proles because the proles have no sense of their subjugation.
The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Look at me! Look at me! Daisy, look at me now! It is fun to have fun, until you must take your bow.
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, by Ann Brashares
Poor magic pants, with so much postage to mail them.
A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens
Christmas doesn’t come from being all jerky, maybe Christmas perhaps means a prize-winning turkey.
The Iliad, by Homer
I do not like it, King Priam. I do not like the abduction of Menelaus’s ma’am.
The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
It’s more arable out there, in the clean, dust-free air.
The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien
It all began with a mark on the door. A mark on the door shouldn’t lead to much more.