MY FAVOURITE CHILDREN'S BOOK. MY FAVOURITE BOOK! (Fox in Socks - Dr Seuss)

Member Name: Richada

Product:	Fox in Socks - Dr Seuss
Date:	26/10/05 (957 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Educational. Funny. Magical.

Disadvantages: I am no longer 5 years old!

I am not usually a great one for harping back to the “good old days”, maybe I had precious few of them to look back on dewy eyed over anyway, but there is just something about days like today that make me want to regress back to childhood.

You may regard this particular “occurrence” today as totally irrelevant to an early reading book for children and in a sense you have a valid point. You see, this afternoon I had a “gentleman” call me on the telephone requesting to open a credit account with our company – the very same man whose company went into liquidation owing us just over £4000 only THREE weeks ago.

I had mentioned to my wife at lunchtime that, this evening I would come home and write a review on “Mr Fox” as I have known him since my very first memories as a four year old child. My only problem with this particular review, being the “angle” from which I would approach writing it…….

……it was these thoughts that were going through my head when Mr Phoenix Company came on the phone, requesting that we be taken for another ride.

Now, at 43 years of age, I still regard my 1966 (first edition) copy of Fox in Socks by Dr. Seuss as THE treasure in my book collection. I am not embarrassed to tell you that I have been known to pick it up when feeling down, read it from cover to cover and feel 100% better afterwards. Maybe for me Mr Fox is some kind of comfort blanket!

Thank you Dr Seuss, you are a genius putting me in the right mood to handle that particularly tricky business call this afternoon.

OK, why then is Seuss such a genius?

Far be it for me to pontificate on the subject of child psychology, but I truly believe that this book, along with his many others can aid, amuse and educate even the most unwilling of learners.

How can a child not be drawn in by a book proclaiming on its very first page:

Take it
SLOWLY
This Book
Is
DANGEROUS!

Well in what sense is it dangerous? If a small child dropped it on their bare foot, I guess my hard backed copy could inflict pain, but no, it is only dangerous in the sense that it can prove all too addictive fun. Both for the adult reader and, certainly in my case as a child, the amused listener.

The next progression is, of course, from amused listener to interested reader. On the cover of my book is a logo stating “I can read it all by myself” Beginner Books. In my case that certainly proved quickly to be the case. It then becomes a challenge to read out loud the ever more twisting, tongue twisters ever more quickly!

As with all good children’s books of course there have to be illustrations, encouraging the child to read and learn about what their eyes are telling them from the pictures on the page. In my opinion (and yes I know others differ!) the illustrations are simply brilliant.

Simple, but brilliant.

It starts right at the beginning, introducing you to Fox – he is red incidentally. A picture of a red fox, the word Fox. A pair of blue socks, the word Socks. Then we have a brown box and a rather daffy yellow character by the name of Knox. Incidentally Knox looks very much like Sam in Green Eggs and Ham.

As you can see from the list of words; Fox, Socks, Box and Knox we have the basis for the ever more incredible tongue twisting pages to follow.

As with all good book reviews I have no intention of giving the whole plot and ending away, that would not be fair, after all you may not have parental controls set on DOOYOO, I would hate to break the surprise so callously.

Of course foxes have always had an unduly hard time on the PR front and I am afraid the Dr Seuss’s invention is no exception to that rule. He is a crafty old beast indeed and certainly the hapless Knox is no match for his cunning ways.

As the story progresses, the number of characters contained in it increase, we are introduced to; chicks, bricks, and clocks, all of which, due to the illustrations are imbued with a certain “character”.

Clever is the way in that we meet the characters one at a time, we grow used to them before the next one enters the story. A stunning (well that is a joke!) blonde female, called Sue, of totally indiscriminate age with a shock of blond hair arrives on page 19, three pages later we meet Crow.

All of these characters are in a sense stooges to Mr Fox, who uses them to tie up poor old Knox in ever more, ridiculous, yet funny, tongue twisting situations.

By the end of the story we have a whole cast of characters, pigs, a goose, two Knox like characters – BIM and BEN, helpfully wearing shirts with their names on so that we can identify them, even a duck, who also looks suspiciously like Knox, but has webbed feet. The tweetle beetles, a white Knox like character called Luke and a grey poodle complete our cast list here – as you can see quite a complex arrangement of characters and yet all easy to define.

When my sister in law first came to England in the summer of 2002, she spotted Fox in Socks on my bookshelf, drawn to it by the colourful red Fox on the cover. At the age of eight, Klaudia, who is Polish, spoke not a word of English. Some of her very first English words were learned from this very same book that hat initially taught me to start reading all those years ago. I was delighted that she was so enthralled with Fox in Socks and sent her back to Poland with an up to date copy of the book, allowing us to read it together over the telephone.

On her second visit, and as she was about to start formal English lessons at school, we tracked down a volume of five Dr Seuss stories, including Fox in Socks and Green Eggs and Ham. At £4.99 from our local “Publisher’s Outlet Store” I think this makes a remarkably good present for any small child, as indeed do the individual Dr Seuss books such as Fox in Socks reviewed here.

It is of great delight to me that dear old Mr Fox has endured the ravages of time, that forty years after my much treasured book was published, he is still available today. Surely a book that has been in print for all those years hardly needs a glowing review from me!

Thank you Dr Seuss, you have given me many years of harmless entertainment, your little book has stood the test of time and still stands proud in our electronic age.

Yes Dr Seuss was a genius!

Fox in Socks by Dr Seuss:

ISBN 0394800389
Publisher Random House Children’s Books
(There are several other forms of this same book available – with differing illustrations.)
Priced from £0.43 from Amazon.

Summary: A magical book for children of all ages - proving that we men never grow up!