The Bippolo Seed

Not Seuss's best work but insightful in showing how these stories were expanded later into better known works. Best story is "The Bippolo Seed." ( )

I grew up on Dr. Seuss books. Some of the earliest things I remember reading on my own were the traditional "Cat in the Hat", "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish", "Green Eggs and Ham", "Yertle the Turtle" and "My Book About Me". I remember mourning when Theodore Geisel passed away, knowing that his last few books, such as "The Butter Battle Book" would be the last new Dr. Seuss titles I'd ever see. Therefore, I was very surprised and pleased to stumble across this book on the New Books display in the kids book room. This book collects seven rare and obscure short works Geisel created for various magazines back in the 1950s and 1960s. Some of these stories play out very similarly to his well-known tales, while others are true oddities. I found myself in a nostalgic mood while enjoying this short collection -- it should appeal to any Seussian fan, in addition kids having their very first Seuss experiences. Not great literature, but a fascinating look at a missing chapter in the life of Dr. Seuss!

Originally reviewed for my local library's website: http://www.lincolnlibraries.org/depts/bookguide/srec/staffrec12-07.htm ( )

Who isn't a fan of Dr. Seuss? His fun, rhyming stories with a moral taught many of us to read, or at least to enjoy words and the way they sound.

In The Bippolo Seed and Other Lost Stories by Dr. Seuss, Charles D. Cohen, a leading Seuss scholar, tracked down and collected early Seuss stories previously only published in long-forgotten issues of magazines:

"From 1948 through 1959, Ted Geisel published a series of short works that appeared in magazines, most of which were tossed out when the next month's issue arrives. Over time, these stories were largely forgotten. But after tracing references to them, I traveled to libraries to research their collections of these old magazines; investigated, photocopied, and chronicled the stories; and eventually tracked down and purchased copies of the original magazines through the Internet" (pg. 9).

The result is a short collection of seven nearly-forgotten Seuss stories, each one imaginative, fun, and edifying.

When flipping through the book, I noticed that one story, called "Gustav, the Goldfish" sounded very familiar. I knew that I had read the story before, and yet this was supposed to be a book of "lost" stories. In the introduction, Cohen explains:

"Early editions of the popular Beginner Book A Fish out of Water included a claim on the dust jacket that the author, Helen Palmer, was 'married to an eccentric writer, Theo. LeSieg (himself a Beginner Book author.' By now, many people know that 'LeSieg' is 'Geisel' spelled backward and that Helen Palmer was Ted Geisel's first wife. What few people know is that her book was based on one of Ted's lost stories, 'Gustav, the Goldfish' (pg. 11).

I must have read Palmer's book - Cohen says that "the basic stories in 'Gustav' and A Fish out of Water are identical" (pg. 11).

Other stories in the book are "The Bippolo Seed", about a duck and a cat that get a little too greedy with their wishes; "The Rabbit, the Bear, and the Zinniga-Zanniga", about a rabbit that outsmarts a bear to save his life; "Tadd and Todd", about identical twins looking for their own unique identities; "Steak for Supper" which features quite a few of Seuss's inventive creatures; "The Strange Shirt Spot", the idea for which influences an important scene in the later The Cat in the Hat Comes Back; and "The Great Henry McBride", in which a boy imagines having many fabulous jobs when he grows up.

The Bippolo Seed and Other Lost Stories is a fun, quick read for Seuss fans like me. I highly recommend it. ( )

Summary:

The duck finds a seed that if he planted and than count to three that it would sprout and give you whatever you wished for. A cat came along and changed the ducks mind about what to wish for besides duck food and a very small amount the car changed the duck's mind to include a whole lot more than what he needed and in the end niether one got anything out of the seed.

Personal Reaction:

this book makes you think of people that could be happy with very little but are not happy with what they have always trying to find ways to get more.

Classroom extension ideas:

have student make up there own lists and see how creedy they can be ( )

These are wonderful read-aloud stories - I particularly liked "Steak for Supper" with its strange and fantastic creatures and the titular "Bippolo Seed", which offers Seuss' trademark moral ending. ( )