Hop on Pop (Beginner Books)

published	February 12th 1963 by Random House Books for Young Readers
binding	Hardcover
isbn	039480029X (isbn13: 9780394800295)
url	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...
pages	72
description	Published in '63, Hop on Pop remains a perennial favorite for teaching reading. Here, as in most of his extensive body of work, Dr. Seuss creat...more [close] Published in '63, Hop on Pop remains a perennial favorite for teaching reading. Here, as in most of his extensive body of work, Dr. Seuss creates uncomplicated, monosyllabic rhymes to foster learning & inspire children to read. What was radical about this book at the time of publication (making it still compelling today) is Seuss' departure from the traditionally dull pictures & sentences of primers. The illustrations here are wildly wonderful. Accompanying language, while simple, is delightfully silly. For example, the rhyme "THREE TREE/Three fish in a tree/Fish in a tree?/How can that be?" is brought to life with a trio of plump, self-satisfied fish perched atop globular branches as two stymied hybrid dog-rabbit-humanoids look on in consternation. Hop on Pop does much more than teach children the basics of word construction, it also introduces them to the incomparable pleasure of reading books. [close]
date added	03-04-07 edit book

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erik rated it:

06/05/08

bookshelves: art

Read in January, 1963

recommended to erik by: Lajla and Christian Stousland
recommends it for: kids and their friends

One evening as my parent's were settling down for Jack Paar's Tonight Show, I was summoned out of bed to the living room of our Levitowner house in the Meadowdale development near Carpentersville. Their faces were grave. "Your mother has something important to tell you," Dad said. I was seven, still sleeping in a blue one-piece with booties, pajamas kept inside a zippered tiger on the bed during the day. They had been warned by Dr. Spock that this was a crucial event, telling the o...more One evening as my parent's were settling down for Jack Paar's Tonight Show, I was summoned out of bed to the living room of our Levitowner house in the Meadowdale development near Carpentersville. Their faces were grave. "Your mother has something important to tell you," Dad said. I was seven, still sleeping in a blue one-piece with booties, pajamas kept inside a zippered tiger on the bed during the day. They had been warned by Dr. Spock that this was a crucial event, telling the only child that a competitor was on the way.

Upon hearing the news, I ran into my room to return with tiger's companion, my teddy bear, what once had been Mother's teddy across the sea in Oslo, literally my oldest possession. "Here," I said, with gravity approaching theirs, "this is for the baby."

When the baby came it was a boy. I had had a part in naming it. The initial idea had been to name it after Father's father if it was a boy, to name it "Fin Graff". Thinking this wasn't fair, and, in keeping with Norwegian tradition, having only two names myself, I suggested naming it after both grandfathers, "Fin Einar Graff". And so it was to be.

The Fin Einar was premature and Mother was Rh negative, so it was some time before we were able to pick up the thing. Another "crucial event", the parents were worried about what I'd think of the wizened, red little thing with the peanut head covered with scraggly wisps of damp hair. I said it, he was "beautiful" and rode home with him in the back of Dad's Hilman Husky station wagon--in awe.

Now I was eight and, as Kurt Vonnegut would say, "alone no more". It was great fun having a little brother, almost as good as having Jimmy Olsen, my mongrel dog. As soon as he could focus on pictures, I started reading to him like the parents did.

The paternal grandmother, Lajla, and her second husband, Christian (the first, Einar Sr., having died when I was five), were very generous with the books. While Fin was growing up, he had a subscription to some childrens' book operation so we got a new picture book delivered to the house regularly. Many of them were Dr. Seuss. Hell, all of them might have been his books. Any others weren't memorable. In any case, I liked the Seuss stuff not only because some of them were familiar from my own childhood, but also because they're actually interesting--wierdly creative in a way both kids and grownups can appreciate.

Now Fin is, like myself, very, very old. Unlike myself, he has spawned. This one I also had a part in naming. So convinced were he and Miki that they would have a boy, they had already named it "Liam". Raising the remote possibility of a female, I suggested, cleverly, the name of an old girlfriend from Norway, "Anne-Kristine", a name they appreciated because "Anne-Lise" is Mother's name and because, hey, it is a great name! So, another peanut-head entered the world, her name Americanized to "Anna-Kristina" in deference to the expected spelling proclivities of school teachers and bureaucrats, and those old Dr. Seuss books got a second, even, in some cases, a third run.

They are still not boring....less

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Hop on Pop (Beginner Books)

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