Product Description

The Star-Bellied Sneetches have bellies with Stars, but the Plain-Bellied Sneetches have none upon thars! Rivalries rocket when Sylvester McMonkey McBean steps in to prey on their prejudices, but in the end we realise that prejudice is nothing more than a rediculous waste of time. With his unique combination of hilarious stories, zany pictures and riotous rhymes, Dr. Seuss has been delighting young children and helping them learn to read for over fifty years. Creator of the wonderfully anarchic Cat in the Hat, and ranked among the UK's top ten favourite children's authors, Seuss is firmly established as a global best-seller, with nearly half a billion books sold worldwide. As the first step in a major rebrand programme, HarperCollins is relaunching 17 of Dr. Seuss's best-selling books, including such perennial favourites as The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham and Fox in Socks. In response to consumer demand, the bright new cover designs incorporate much needed guidance on reading levels, with the standard paperbacks divided into three reading strands - Blue Back Books for parents to share with young children, Green Back Books for budding readers to tackle on their own, and Yellow Back Books for older, more fluent readers to enjoy. The Sneetches and Other Stories belongs to the Yellow Back Book range.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7320 in Books
• Published on: 2003-05-06
• Format: Illustrated
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 68 pages

Review
Dr. Seuss ignites a child's imagination with his mischievous characters and zany verses. The Express

About the Author
Theodor Seuss Geisel - better known to millions of his fans as Dr. Seuss - was born the son of a park superintendent in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1904. After studying at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, and later at Oxford University in England, he became a magazine humorist and cartoonist, and an advertising man. He soon turned his many talents to writing children's books, and his first book - And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street - was published in 1937. His greatest claim to fame was the one and only The Cat in the Hat, published in 1957, the first of a successful range of early learning books known as Beginner Books.

Customer Reviews

Full of profundity
The main story, of 4, in this book is fantastic. As usual The Sneetches carries a moral. V. profound. The other stories are also great. The themes and messages being stubborness, the problems that arise when you call all 23 of your children the same names and don't be scared of pale green pants, they have feelings too. This book will make you laugh and cry. Buy it, baby!

Read to Your Child to Develop Bonding and Intellect!
Researchers constantly find that reading to children is valuable in a variety of ways, not least of which are instilling a love of reading and improved reading skills. With better parent-child bonding from reading, your child will also be more emotionally secure and able to relate better to others. Intellectual performance will expand as well. Spending time together watching television fails as a substitute.

To help other parents apply this advice, as a parent of four I consulted an expert, our youngest child, and asked her to share with me her favorite books that were read to her as a young child. The Sneetches and Other Stories was one of her picks.

One of the reasons I liked to read Dr. Seuss stories to all of my children was that they contain up-lifting moral messages. In The Sneetches, the lesson is tolerance of those who are different from you. In The Zax, cooperation is encouraged. In Too Many Daves, individuality is espoused. What Was I Scared of? looks at the irrational bases of many of our fears.

The stories are also wonderful because they are humorous, have fun poems, and the drawings are very interesting and unusual.

The moral lesson in The Sneetches is put together in a very clever way. The story starts with two types of Sneetches, those with stars on their tummies and those without. The former are the higher status group. Then, Sylvester McMonkey McBean came to town with machines that could add stars. He quickly got rich making all the Sneetches look alike. The high-class Sneetches didn't like that, so they paid to have the stars taken off. And so on it went, until McBean had all of the money. Then, the Sneetches finally got smart and treated everyone alike, whether or not they had stars. As you can see, this makes anyone who holds onto small differences as being important look silly (whether based on something one is born with, or perhaps even based on something one can buy like athletic sneakers). Ah, a great story!

The Zax get so caught up on who is right that the world passes them by. In fact, a whole road and a city are built right over them as they stand firm against the other in the sand. Such a lovely counter-thought that is for stubborn children to learn!

Too Many Daves reminds me of a family I met where the father was named Bruce and had several sons named Bruce. It was most confusing when they were all around. We have a bit of the same problem in my family where there are four Dons in three generations. Everyone in my family lobbies against any more Dons!

What Was I Scared of! was my daughter's least favorite story in this book. I think that was because the scary parts last for many dark-looking pages. The resolution that the scary looking pants are just as frightened as you are takes a long time to develop. You may find that your child will like this story at an older age than the other stories in the book. It's the last one, so it's easy to stop just before it.

Now, having read (or reread) these stories, ask yourself what misconceptions you have about the way the importance of how things are. If you act the opposite of any of these stories, your child may find you a little hypocritical. Cure those little faults before you fall in your child's eyes!

This book is one of the best ever!
This book was one of the first "big" books i read, and i still read it today, at the age of 17. The Snetches is a timeless classic, teaching the reader about the dangers of racism etc. the zax is bizzare, as is what was i scared of, but they are still fantastic!