Dr. Seuss - There's a Wocket in My Pocket!: Dr. Suess's Book of Ridiculous Rhymes

What may you ask is a Wocket? Apparently it is a little green creature with long blond hair. But what prey tell is a Woset or a Zlock or a Wasket? Well these are just some of the characters that pop up in Dr. Seuss's children's book: There's a Wocket in my Pocket!

There's a Wocket in My Pocket!

What is this book about? Well it's pure silliness I tell ya, pure silliness. Or maybe, just maybe there's a lesson to be learned. A reading lesson, perhaps but that is probably a matter of opinion. This book like most Dr. Seuss books is a book with rhymes through out its pages. But what is unusual about this book is that many of the words are words that do not really exist, at least not in the English language. In fact they are made up Seuss creatures that rhyme with every day words. But one must wonder why is Dr. Seuss trying to teach our children to read about silly creatures that only live in his world? I think possibly the goal is to teach certain words by emphasizing the sounds of them by matching them up with similar sounding words that of course rhyme with the actual word but are not actually words themselves. Are you lost yet? Let me explain by example: "There is a Zlock behind my clock." Of course no one really knows what a Zlock is but you can see that it rhymes with clock and also has most of the same letters except for the first letter. Another example is, "There is a Nink in my Sink." And the book goes on in that fashion on nearly all of the pages, with only a few pages varying slightly

This I believe is meant to reinforce the sound and lettering that makes up the word clock by relating it to another word that is similar. For instance when children learn to read many of them learn by getting the hang of similar spelled words, such as box, fox, or hat, bat, sat. The children learn how to spell and read each word by beginning to recognize what the ending letters sound like. If you have the word hat, and you take away the h at the beginning and add the letter b and sound it out you now have a new word spelled almost the same but with a completely different meaning. This I believe is the concept that Dr. Seuss is trying to get across.

I am not sure however if the relation to imaginary creatures to common every day words is helpful or confusing. But perhaps these creatures are more fun for children to rhyme with everyday words like clock, then let's say block.

Each page of this book introduces a new creature that rhymes with an every day word. Things like there's a Nink in my Sink. I think you get the idea.

There is not really a story line, just a kid walking around his house pointing out the various creatures to you along with the item they rhyme with. Some are limited to that and some have a bit more text.

Illustrations

The cover of the book is in bright yellow. It has a picture of a little boy with a Wocket in his pocket. Each page has a picture of the little boy looking at a certain real life object and a picture of a little creature that represents what ever made up name that has been given to them.

The illustrations are bright and colorful, and very cute. If you are familiar with Illustrations in Suess books, then you should expect to find those same types of illustrations in this book. The wording is large and very easy to read.

My Thoughts

Quite frankly I have mixed feelings about this book. Like I said above I am not really sure if rhyming real words with made up words is confusing for children who are trying to read or if it just confuses them. My two older children already know how to read so this is not something I could explore with them. It is difficult for me to think badly of Dr. Seuss books since both of my children learned to read with Seuss books. In fact each of my older two children's first cover to cover read books were Seuss books. But Red Fish, Blue Fish seems quite a bit easier to pock up in my opinion.

On the bright side the illustrations are adorable. The little creatures are very cute. My two older kids find the book to be very funny and really like the silly made up names of the creatures. But they are really kind of old for this kind of book since my daughter is reading chapter books now and my son is beginning to as well. But still they like this book a lot and enjoy reading it so how can a possibly knock any book that gets kids to sit down and read and actually enjoy their selves while doing.

In conclusion in my opinion there are a lot better Seuss books out there for early readers, but for pure fun this book is certainly a giggle maker.