Dr. Seuss’ Unique Writing Style 

Horton Hears a Who and Horton Hatches the Egg are just two of the very influential children’s books written by Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss. He was born on March 2, 1904, in Massachusetts and was on the verge of becoming a professor before becoming one of the world’s more popular children’s book writers. Over the course of his career and all the fictional stories which Dr. Seuss created, he was able to acquire three Emmys and Grammys along with the 1984 Pulitzer Prize and the Caldecott honor (biography.com). In most of Dr. Seuss’ fictional stories, he portrays a different message for the reader in each children’s book so that the audience may be molded into strong and virtuous individuals. Dr. Seuss’ influential works are all done due to his unique writing style, combining literary techniques with a wild imagination filled with creativity, which allows more engagement and deeper understanding by an audience of all ages.  

In Horton Hears a Who, the story is about a young elephant who finds a whole society the size of a speck of dust. Throughout the story his motive is to try and keep the spec, a ball the size of a dust particle filled with living people, safe from predators and his so-called friends who think he’s gone crazy and try to destroy the speck since he is the only one who can hear them due to his elephant ears. Horton puts the speck in a flower and eventually at the end of the story he is able to convince them that this speck has life through asking them to make as much noise as possible. Hortons “friends” apologize for the way they acted and in turn also help Horton protect the speck (Miss Jeannie). In this novel Dr. Seuss implements 2 major literary techniques, rhyming and dialogue. Dr. Seuss wrote in Horton Hears a Who, “We’ve had quite enough of your bellowing bungle! And I’m here to state,” snapped the big kangaroo “That your silly nonsensical game is all through!” (Miss Jeannie 7:05). Additionally, in the novel once they believe Horton they say “do you see what I mean? They proved they ARE persons, no matter how small … how true! Yes, how true, said the big kangaroo… From now on, I’m going to protect them with you!” (Miss Jeannie 12:25). The usage of dialogue and rhythmic sentences in Dr. Seuss’ writings allows the readers to not only be mentally challenged but also engaged in such work. Without such dialogue as this between characters, and if the book was only narrated, then all interest would be lost by the audience. Not only are the characters interacting with each other, but they also rhyme as they speak, which is a combination of techniques. Moreover, the dialogue which is instituted in this novel isn’t just basic English like “he, hello, goodbye” there are more than one occurrence of complicated phrases and rhyming embedded throughout the story. The rhyming and terminology included aren’t basic whatsoever but rather advanced for your average young reader. This sort of rhyming increases children’s interest to continue reading the book because they are so used to basic kinds of rhyming. Dr. Seuss’ rhyming is unique and advanced, somewhat of a challenge for children. This challenge allowed readers to be more invested and motivated to read the book. 

Another of Giesel’s famous children’s picture books is called Horton Hatches the Egg in which the novel speaks about the same main character as Horton Hears a Who. Horton comes across one of his friends, Mayzie, who is a bird that convinces him to take care of her egg. Throughout the novel Horton sits on the egg for a few seasons while Mayzie is enjoying herself at Palm Beach. Eventually some hunters find Horton and take him as a form of making money by setting him on display at a circus. Mayzie, being in the area of the circus, sees Horton and is enraged because she declares it to be her egg while Horton went through the trouble of taking care of it when she promised she would return. Eventually the egg hatches and it is half elephant half bird putting Mayzie in an even worse mood. The humans take Horton back home to where he was found, and he has full custody of the child. This picture book portrays the meaning of love’s capacity for transformation, together with commitment and responsibility through the usage of his unique illustrations and magical thinking. One out of the hundreds of thousands of illustrations Dr. Seuss created is an illustration of Horton sitting on the egg while atop of a very fragile tree which has a support branch while also being on a ship in the middle of the sea (Chris Spencer, 8:53). This image of Horton just goes to show how creative of an individual Dr. Seuss is. His illustrations throughout all his books including this one is very wacky and colorful yet also fun. The ridiculousness that they portray complements the rhyming perfectly. Such usage of illustrations throughout the novel keeps children interested in finishing the book and encourages imagination to run wild in children’s thoughts. Moreover, Dr. Seuss’ inclusion of the egg hatching at the end of the novel demonstrates magical thinking due to how crazy it is to imagine an elephant hatching a bird egg which turns out to be half bird half elephant (Chris Spencer, 12:54). This very odd ending to just this one book makes readers want to read more Dr. Seuss produced books because of how the plot twists just by the flip of one page. The audience is curious to see how other novels by Dr. Seuss finish; they are more interested in these kinds of readings, which is what made Dr. Seuss writing so unique and successful.  

Moreover, what makes Theodor Seuss Geisel’s writing so unique is how he produces such ideas. He is not the kind of writer who forces writing onto a piece of paper, but rather allows the thoughts to flow naturally in his mind until they are put onto a piece of paper. He was the kind of individual who loved to doodle when he was bored which thus allowed the ideas to just be naturally created. Dr. Seuss never wrote to his audience with an intended message in any novel, yet they all showed certain messages with positive virtues to have in life (Moje paragraph. 16). Dr. Seuss did not author stories for the money, but rather to entertain his audience with the whacky creative ideas which popped into his mind. He did in fact write about negative occurrences happening in either the environment or society. A major example being The Lorax which was created because of a kind of tree which went extinct. This occurrence in the real world allowed him to have the idea to spread a message across the world through a children’s book. Allowing his novels to have very open-ended messages. Everyone in society can have their own message from his novels because there is no one specific message included. In Horton Hears a Who one individual can say that the message was no matter your size or situation your opinion can make a difference or that a kind and vitreous individual is what makes such opinions heard someone who oppresses the bullies in society. An article by Miriam states, “the children in the classroom will have different answers. They may change their answers as they get older, but however they respond, the teacher has the opportunity to discuss the choices that we make in our lives, and the reasons for our choices” (The Cat in the Hat section). This was in relation to after reading The Cat in The Hat once again reinforcing the fact that children and adults will each have a different understanding of Dr. Seuss novels and just how well rounded each of his novels are to the point where they are like an open-ended question which has multiple answers that are correct.  

Dr. Seuss was a very influential and creative writer who always was able to keep his audience very entertained and always thinking because of his unique writing style. His wacky rhyming and illustrations really engaged readers into his stories and allowed them to get more connected with the book. Enabling readers to pick up messages of their own in each of his novels, there was never a strict message in any of his books due to how unpredictable such books were. His legacy continues to live today with the movies and great literature left behind for future generations to continue to review.  

 
Works Cited  

Dr.Seuss Biography.com, march 2, 2021 from: https://www.biography.com/writer/dr-seuss   

“Horton Hears a Who! by Dr.Seuss Read Aloud” Youtube (2019), uploaded by Storytime with Miss Jeannie, March 7 2019 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-i1E1UbwVI.  

“Horton Hatches the Egg” youtube, uploaded by Chris Spencer, 2020 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVdB0MtZvvk&t=630s  

Moje, & Shyu, W.-R. (1992). The places you have taken us, Dr. Seuss. The Education Digest, 58(4), 26–. https://web-p-ebscohost-com.ccny-proxy1.libr.ccny.cuny.edu/ehost/detail/detail?vid=0&sid=4b22c0b1-fe87-43b9-9d5e-c117f691b77d%40redis&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#AN=9302040582&db=tfh  

Singer, Miriam J. “Character education, Dr Seuss and The Whariki: a likely combination.” Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, vol. 35, no. 2, June 2010, pp. 43+. Gale Academic OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A252088226/AONE?u=cuny_ccny&sid=bookmark-AONE&xid=db6ac0da. Accessed 21 Nov. 2022. https://go-gale-com.ccny-proxy1.libr.ccny.cuny.edu/ps/i.do?p=AONE&u=cuny_ccny&id=GALE|A252088226&v=2.1&it=r