Our Favorite Dr. Seuss Books

Mention the incomparable Dr. Seuss to any book lover, and they are apt to get a dreamy look in their eyes as they recount all of their favorite titles. There are so many great Dr. Seuss books that it’s hard to pick just one—and yet that’s exactly what we asked our writers to do. Fortunately, they were up to the task. Here are a few of our best loved Seussian favorites.

While I’ve always admired Yertle the Turtle‘s Machiavellian quest for seating supremacy, my hands-down Seussian favorite will forever be Green Eggs and Ham. As one of the oft-unadventurous contingent of eaters I related to the Sam-I-Am-besieged, stovepipe-hatted patriot at the center of this story. Sam-I-Am is the embodiment of the frustration of constantly being told you should like pho. People look at you like you’re an incorrigible Sneetch should you express disdain at the sight of quinoa. Though the lesson in the end—to try things before becoming a Negative Nancy—is important, there’s another equally vital question: Who would ever eat things with a fox? Did we learn nothing from Dora? —Nicole Hill

I can’t overstate the importance of Dr. Seuss in my development as a reader. I had One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish in my lap on the day that repeating by memory became actual reading, and it was the Sneetches that taught me tolerance—and the Pants With Nobody in Them that taught me terror. The Sneetches and Other Stories, including the HILARIOUS “Too Many Daves” (Oliver Boliver Butt, anyone?) forever holds a place in my heart, but my favorite one-shot Seuss has got to be Horton Hatches the Egg, a tale of duty, honor, and comeuppance. Horton is a gentle-eyed elephant railroaded by lazy bird Mayzie into sitting on her egg while she heads off to Palm Beach. Noble Horton sits on his charge through snow and rain, capture by hunters, even forced enlistment in a traveling circus. By the time Mayzie gets around to reclaiming her kid, it’s ready to hatch—and a little winged elephant emerges, which nobody can contest belongs to awesome dad Horton. –Melissa Albert

Many people malign Oh! The Places You’ll Go
As an unoriginal gift
For the grad who needs lifting, who feels sad, set adrift.
It’s cheap, they say
And trite, at times slow.
But I love it, I do, Oh! The Places You’ll Go.
It brings me a smile at the start of the day
At lunch, at high tea, in the shower, on a sleigh.
I give it, I’ll take it, I’ll read it aloud,
I’ll wrap it and bow it and send on a tray.
It’s true and wise and, yes, cliche
But don’t you find its sincerity almost…risqué today?
Keep your Horton, your Lorax, your Who.
Actually, no, I’ll take those too.
But if you’re shopping for some Seussian cheer
I find The Places You’ll Go goes the furthest
and to my heart stays most near.
–Kathryn Williams

As a kid who grew up on a steady diet of Seuss, it’s all but impossible to single out just one all-time favorite story but two books do stand out, for very different reasons. The Cat in the Hat taught me at an early age that poetry doesn’t have to be serious—it can be whimsical! (“I know it is wet/And the sun is not sunny. But we can have/Lots of good fun that is funny!”) The Sneetches was a truly life-changing story for me as a kid. Woven into that quirky narrative were some incredibly profound messages—first and foremost, the inanity of discrimination but also the power that comes from having the inner strength to be yourself and to accept others as they are. And although Seuss originally published The Sneetches and Other Stories in 1961, that message is still monumentally important… arguably more so today than back in the ‘60s. –Paul Goat Allen

It has to be How The Grinch Stole Christmas, because every time I read it I am six again, at my Grandmother’s house, surrounded by yet-to-be-opened toys and my family, high on Christmas. I do believe it’s Seuss’s writing and poetry at its best. And it’s one of those stories that I don’t think any other person could have come up with. It is so original and set apart from any other Christmas story there is. –Lauren Passell

My favorite Dr. Seuss book has always been Green Eggs and Ham. I like to think of it as the original Foodie Lit, plus it made me feel like it was totally okay to say no to lunch that looked and sounded kinda gross. –Dahlia Adler

Lately my favorite Dr. Seuss book is whichever one I happen to be reading to my toddler at the moment (I say you haven’t lived until you’ve heard a 22-month-old excitedly squeal “Dr. Seuuuess!”; feel free to contact me for video evidence if you like), but as a kid, I was always partial to The Butter Battle Book. At the time I had no idea it was a satire of the Cold War or the insane logic of a policy of mutually-assured destruction. I just thought the increasingly over-the-top weapons the Yooks and the Zooks came up with to defend their bread-eating preferences (butter-side up vs. butter-side down) were delightfully silly, and the cliffhanger ending left me wanting more. I also loved toast (butter-side up). –Joel Cunningham

I received Dr. Seuss’s My Book About Me as a gift when I was around six years old, and I found it endlessly entertaining. For one thing, here was a book that you were encouraged to write and draw in! For another, most children are convinced that everything is always about them—and this book completely validates those feelings. It’s full of silly and absurd fill-in-the-blank questions that are actually fun to answer about yourself (How many teeth do you have? Do you wear eyeglasses? How many pictures hang on your walls?), unlike the boring questions kids are used to being asked by adults (What’s your favorite subject in school? Did you eat those cookies and spoil your dinner again? etc.). This book was yet more proof that Dr. Seuss knows what kids love, and he knows how to write the kinds of books that they will never forget. –Molly Schoemann-McCann

Setting aside the fact that for years–YEARS–I thought Go, Dog, Go was a Dr. Seuss book (clearly, it is Seuss-lite), my favorite would be How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, mostly because it gave a voice to emotionally impaired people. Much like Chandler on Friends, I could rest easy knowing someone else had a smaller than usual-sized heart, even if that someone was terrrrible. Hey, hearts grow. –Janet Manley

SNEETCHES!
The Sneetches & Other Stories has always been my favorite. When I was in sixth grade, I got a t-shirt with a big star on thar, which completely goes against the moral of the story. It doesn’t matter, everyone thought I was a Dallas Cowboys fan anyway. The Sneetches are adorable, like yellow duck dogs, and I love them. Of course, the best thing about the story is the message of acceptance of others and yourself: Thanks to the Sneetches I probably won’t get a boob job. Also, I appreciate the B plot about the merits of entrepreneurship. Finally, I like that there is no weird meat. –Emily Winter

My favorite Dr. Seuss book was easily And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street. I remember thinking the first time my mom read it to me that it was the most insane thing I had ever heard. It’s completely bananas. It has such an incredible build and a brilliant punch line at the end. It was the first time that I realized that it was okay for your imagination to go to the “insane” place when writing and storytelling. I still love it to this day. I think it’s his most off-the-wall book. –Josh Perilo

One Dr. Seuss classic that’s been resurfacing with increasing frequency in my house is The Sneetches & Other Stories, Seuss’s masterful satire of discrimination and an overt expression of his attitude toward anti-semitism. While all my 4-year-old currently remarks on when I read the story (over and over, by the way) is the silliness of the star-bellied Sneetches and their plain-bellied counterparts, who spend all their pennies taking advantage of McBean’s star removal/application machines, she is giddy at the end when the Sneetches–with stars and without–all learn to be friends. And McBean, who is confident from the outset that “you can’t teach a Sneetch” walks away with bulging pockets. That Seuss is able, in a handful of delightful rhymes and illustrations, to make a toddler understand that superficial differences have no bearing on friendships, is evidence of his genius. –Dell Villa

What’s your favorite Dr. Seuss book?