Horton Hatches the Egg

Poor Horton. Dr. Seuss's kindly elephant is persuaded to sit on an egg while its mother, the good-for-nothing bird lazy Maysie, takes a break. Little does Horton know that Maysie is setting off for a permanent vacation in Palm Springs. He waits, and waits, never leaving his precarious branch, even through a freezing winter and a spring that's punctuated by the insults of his friends. ("They taunted. They teased him. They yelled 'How Absurd! Old Horton the Elephant thinks he's a bird!'") Further indignities await, but Horton has the patience of Job--from whose story this one clearly derives--and he is rewarded in the end by the surprise birth of... an elephant-bird. Horton Hatches the Egg contains some of Theodor Geisel's most inspired verse and some of his best-ever illustrations, the dated style of which only accentuates their power and charm. A book no childhood should be without. (Ages 2 to 7) --Richard Farr

• Horton Hears a Who!
• Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories
• Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose (Classic Seuss)
• The Sneetches and Other Stories
• And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street
• McElligot's Pool (Classic Seuss)
• Bartholomew and the Oobleck: (Caldecott Honor Book) (Classic Seuss)
• The Lorax (Classic Seuss)
• If I Ran the Zoo (Classic Seuss)
• The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins (Classic Seuss)