Horton Hatches the Egg (Dr. Seuss Book and Cassette Classics)

Rating:
Summary: faithful 100%
Review: As I kid I loved this book because I thought Horton was a pure wonder. I always loved the line "an elephant faithful 100%". And my little innocent heart took it all very seriously and I wanted to be just like Horton... faithful 100%. As an adult this book has taken on a very new stronger meaning that I did not see as a child... And I am very happy to be passing along the message to my children.

Rating:
Summary: Virtue Earns a Reward!
Review: This book clearly deserves more than five stars!

Horton Hatches the Egg is one of my very favorite children's books. The story opens with Mayzie, a lazy bird, sitting on her nest hatching an egg. She's terribly bored and tired and wants a break. She persuades Horton, the elephant, to take over for her. This is a good choice on her part because, "An elephant's faithful -- one hundred percent!"

So Horton props up the tree so it can take his weight, climbs up onto the nest, and ever so gently . . . sits on the egg.

Mayzie decides a little vacation in Palm Beach will be in order. Once there, she says . . . "why bother?" and abandons her egg.

What Horton didn't know is that this egg needed 51 more weeks of hatching! But, never mind. "He said what he meant and he meant what he said." He sat on that egg, no matter what.

Through a long series of misadventures, Mayzie and Horton are reunited just as the egg hatches. Mayzie wants her egg back, and Horton doesn't agree. Then the big surprise happens and Horton gets his reward!

Teaching children patience and persistence . . . well, that takes a lot of patience and persistence. Horton Hatches the Egg is a way to provide a small fictional example when setbacks and delays occur. My youngsters didn't understand Thomas Edison's comment about genius being 99 percent perspiration until they were well past their Dr. Seuss days. I like to think that their hard-working adult selves (for the three who are adults) were formed in part by Horton's example in this book.

This book contains many valuable lessons to encourage such as: keeping your word; being honest; looking out for those in need; sticking through to the end; facing your fears; and many others. It's a remarkable thing to realize also how well the ridiculous image of an unhappy elephant sitting on a nest is a bare tree can create all of those good notions. Way to go, Dr. Seuss!

Rating:
Summary: Review
Review: This is the tale of a bird that has an egg but he gets bored sitting on it. He decided to ask Horton the elephant to sit on the egg for him. He says he will and the bird flies away to go on vacation. He sits and sits on the egg and the bird doesn't come back. Eventually people find the elephant sitting up in the tree and he will not leave because he promises he will sit on it for the bird. Some people take him to a carnival as a show. Then the bird shows up at the carnival and sees the elephant on the tree. The egg starts to hatch and the bird comes back to take all the credit for it but when the egg is hatch it is an elephant bird.
This is a story that shows that you can't just let someone else do all the work and expect to get something. This is a great moralistic tale and I think Dr. Suess does a really good job illustrating this point. I think that this is a great book for children because it teaches them a lesson and it is a fun story at the same time. It also has great pictures as all of Dr. Suess books do.

Rating:
Summary: This elephant's faithful, one hundred percent
Review: You've gotta love the Horton man. Dr. Seuss's popular elephant starred in not one but two of Theodore Geisel's great picture books for the kiddies. Now with the 100th Anniversary of Dr. Suess's birth nigh upon us, it's a good idea to take a look at some of his most successful books to appreciate them fully once again.

Mayzie bird is a lazy bird, and would much rather be flying off to somewhere fun rather than tend to her egg. But when friendly (and gullible) Horton passes by her, Mayzie sees her chance to grab a little R & R in sunny Palm Beach. She convinces Horton to sit on her egg, a ploy that works despite Horton's concerns. Once gone, however, Mayzie decides "never" to go back to her nest again. Horton, stuck with the egg on his own, does everything he can to ensure it's safety. Through blizzard, teasing, capture, and seasickness Horton is faithful to his promise, "One hundred percent". When the egg finally hatches (and Mayzie insists on claiming it once the work has been finished) the result is a surprise and delight to the patient elephant.

There's a lot to love in this old story. The Seussian rhyming schemes (often parodied but rarely equaled) have the perfect amount of syllables per line. Every page scans easily, and you cannot help but hear the words spoken in your brain as you read them. I remember growing up in Kalamazoo, Michigan as a child and delighting at the reading of the places Horton travels (ala circus) that mentioned my own rhymable home town. Such lines are coupled with the fabulous illustrations that show every minute of Horton's misery in wrenching detail (though not so much that you ever think the elephant is under too serious duress). Thus the payoff at the end is even better than you could hope for. It's amazing how memorable I find these illustrations, even now some twenty years later. There's something about Dr. Seuss that just connects with children on the deepest level imaginable. And there's something about "Horton Hears the Who" that deserves that connection.