To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street” deals with the importance of the imagination, something that few people would dispute. Since Dr. Seuss’ target audience is children (although his last two books, “Oh, The Places You’ll Go” and “You’re Only Old Once” were geared toward an older audience… it would be interesting to see if he would have continued in that vein supposing he did not die), parents are the ones in charge of the buying… and most ‘responsible’ parents would like their children to learn the morals and ethics Seuss preaches in his stories. Was Dr. Seuss simply writing stories targeted to moral-hungry parents to rack in the dollars, or did he seriously have something creative to say or do? That shall be the subject of this essay. Since I do not have any serious autobiographical information on the man, and since I’m not Dr. Seuss himself I obviously cannot get inside his head and decipher what exactly his intentions were. I shall attempt to answer that question using selections from his writing and artistry, for those are the closest we can get to the mind of this genius (and he is a genius whether he is a member of group 1 or 2 … marketing geniuses and creative geniuses both fit in the “genius” category). I shall go about this task in a typical report sort of way, by showing the case for Group 1, showing the case for Group 2, and finally writing my personal opinion. Part 1 – Seuss as a money-hungry product of the system: I said it before, but I’ll say it again: If you look at the works of Dr. Seuss, extreme moral undertones abound. Books such as the so previously mentioned “The Lorax” and “Bartholomew and the Oobleck” teach children to respect the environment, a message further improved upon by books like “McElligott’s Pool” and “One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish̶...
