Book Report: Oh, The Places You’ll Go!

By Akela Talamasca on June 9th, 2009

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While Dr. Seuss tops a great many parents’ lists of good authors for kids to read, there’s a book of his that I don’t see mentioned very often. “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!” is an amazing book in several respects, and it deserves more attention than it seems to get.

First of all, it’s clear from the moment it’s opened that this book was done in the latter years of Seuss’s life — his quirky art style is still present, but the actual discrete lines making up his landscapes and characters are wavy and shaky, lacking the smooth grandiosity of his earlier work. It reminds me of reading the later years of “Peanuts“. The drawings are no less fantastical for this, but it is a potent reminder that age has its way with all of us — and, in fact, it serves to underscore the main message of this book.

It wouldn’t be accurate to call this a “story”, as it’s really about giving the reader advice on how to get through life. There are few such books around that speak directly to a young reader without couching everything in the metaphor of talking animals, a thinly-veiled fable on behavior. What this book does instead is tell the reader, “Look, you’re going to do some great things in your life, but you’ll also have mishaps and problems, so be prepared.” This is a bold thing to tell a child; that not everything always works out the way you want it to. But these messages are buffered by the positive outlook of the book, and taken as a whole, it’s a wonderful document, and well worth the purchase.