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On Beyond Zebra!

Book Summary

Reviewed by Peter Lewis

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.

Is It Any Good?

4

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 26 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. Older readers can have fun reading the words with brio and dash, accelerating up through those Nutches in their Nitches.

And before you read Dr. Seuss' pronunciation, you can decipher for yourself the sound of the new letter by the blend of letters Seuss has used in its making. A 4-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.

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