On Beyond Zebra!

Mischievous and mind-expanding verbal high jinks from Dr. Seuss.

Author: Dr. Seuss Illustrator: Dr. Seuss Pages: 58 Publisher: Random House Published Date: 01/01/1955 Genre: Fiction - For Beginning Readers HC Price: $14.95 Publisher's Recommended Reading Level: Ages 4-8 Read Aloud: 4+ Read Alone: 6+

Common Sense Note

The story plays second fiddle to the verse, which is a wry bit of nonsense. A very rich catalog of strange Seussian animals will appeal to young readers and pre-readers.

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Common Sense Review

Reviewed By: Peter Lewis

Here is a lightening agent for the difficult work of learning the alphabet, both a gust of humor and a cautionary tale that we ought to be thankful only twenty-six letters constitute our alphabet.

Readers can dig and dig in this book. The youngest can simply delight in having the loopy verse read to them while they scan the wild images on the page. Older readers can have fun reading the words with brio and dash, accelerating up through those Nutches in their Nitches.

And before you read Seuss's pronunciation, you can decipher for yourself the sound of the new letter by the blend of letters Seuss has used in its making. A four-year-old came up with "mushy" for Seuss's JOGG and "goo-goo" for UM, which when substituted into the text did a job on the rhyme scheme but made the verse gratifyingly his own--an act of cultural appropriation.

Dr. Seuss's ABC is a suitable launching pad for this investigation of the letters beyond Z, and another good alphabet book is Stephen Johnson's Alphabet City.

Plot Summary:

As Dr. Seuss explains it, Z is a good letter, yes indeed--but so is YUZZ, which comes after Z, you see. And WUM and UM and THNAD and FLUNN, which come after YUZZ. More mischievous and mind-expanding verbal high jinks--and fabulous fictional creatures--from the master.

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