My review of Solla Sollew
I read this charmer for the very first time last night when putting my little guy (Joseph’s (much) younger brother) to bed. What a pleasant surprise!
Up till now, if asked to pick a favorite Seuss title, I’d have gone for The King’s Stilts, mainly because of memories of having it read to me as a child. (We still have an early edition of that classic, which might be worth some money if only my sister and I hadn’t marked up the pages.) Dr. Seuss’s better-known creations are great fun, too. Last spring my 12-year-old did a school report on him, from which I learned such interesting trivia as the origin of his first title, And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street: It was suggested by the rhythmic sound of the engine on a ship he was riding home from Europe.
Anyway, with the continuing presence of so many examples in our house, I’d thought I was reasonably up to speed on the Seuss oeuvre. Discovering surprising new material at this late date has a way of making me stop to reconsider. Offhand, I can think of one other that has such a clear moral lesson–Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose. This is not to say that lessons necessarily make a story better. It’s OK to enjoy something for its own sake, and there’s even a Seuss quote to that effect. But right now I find myself receptive to a little more.
No doubt the excitement has something to do with the story’s relevance to a theme I gnaw at with many of my blog posts (this one, for example), i.e., trouble and the disappointing results of our efforts to overcome it. Of course, I also immediately recognized the Wubble chap, who confidently promises to deliver our suffering main character to a utopia but instead ends up multiplying the hardships. That same guy is scheduled to give a speech tonight on prime-time TV. The lure of such characters resembles that of the lottery, and I think all of us feel it at least a little from time to time.
Hence the value of a story like this for folks of all ages.
My son has a habit of demanding that I read the same books again and again every night, so that, from my point of view, we’ve completely worn out some first-rate stories (The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, The Velveteen Rabbit, etc.). Right now I hope he’s up for more of Solla Sollew.
(I originally posted this review on Goodreads.)
Tags: Dr. Seuss, I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew
