Oh Say Can You Say?

Dr. Seuss's 1979 collection of tongue-twister verses isn't trying to tell a story — it's trying to make you trip over your own tongue and laugh about it. Twenty-four phonetically treacherous rhymes, each accompanied by Seuss's most delightfully surreal illustration work, add up to one of the best family read-aloud experiences in the catalog. School Library Journal found the usual Seuss fun shining through, and Common Sense Media agrees. The honest trade-off: there's no plot, no characters you follow, and once the novelty of the tongue-twisters fades for older children, reread value drops. This is a phonemic awareness tool disguised as silliness, and that's a perfectly honorable thing to be. For ages four through eight, especially families who read aloud together, this is pure joy.