by Dennis Krivda

Created on: July 29, 2010

It's hard to argue with success. And, most certainly, an entire franchise of simple books for children from author Theodor Geisel has enjoyed widespread success over the years like no other children's books have. Titles such as Green Eggs And Ham; Hop On Pop; and The Cat In The Hat have adorned bedroom bookshelves for decades in homes from Indiana to India. Writing under the pen names of Dr. Seuss, Theo. LeSieg, and Rosetta Stone, Theodor Geisel published over 60 books for youngsters before his death in 1991. Some of his work has even translated to the silver screen.

For generations, parents and grandparents everywhere have relied on Dr. Seuss's work to entertain, inspire and lull children with his rhythmic rhymes and imaginative landscapes. And Theodor Geisel continued his string of rhyming stories with the publication of There's A Wocket In My Pocket in 1974. (A re-issue printed in 1996 pared the narrative so as to remove some of the more frightening characters and aspects of the original work.)

As a rule, Dartmouth-educated Theodor Geisel's genius always sprang from his ability to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary through a combination of simple, often rhyming words. And his work There's A Wocket In My Pocket is no exception to that rule for - once again - Dr. Seuss opens the door wide enough to let parents share with their developing children the ordinary things around their home in an extraordinary way.

Beginning with the fictional wasket in the basket, Dr. Seuss's There's A Wocket In My Pocket opens with a simple identification of a household item and links it to extraordinary possibilities. He encourages children to use their imagination when looking around their world. On a deeper level, much of Dr. Seuss's work identifies phonemes for children and teaches them at an early age that the spoken English they'll use in life consists largely of simple phonemes which they'll substitute to form useful (or imaginary) words.

The lesson becomes so easy to swallow, in fact, that even a child understands the concept of interchangeable phonemes without even knowing what a phoneme is. Schools around the world use stories like There's A Wocket In My Pocket as part of their speech therapy curricula to help children in learning how to enunciate without bogging them down in the drudgery of monotony. In other words, Dr. Seuss makes learning fun.

But a lesson is only effective if the lesson is learned and then remembered. Without a doubt, the lessons learned

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