"Yertle the Turtle"

Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories by Dr. Seuss

This book is a collection of children's poems all written by Dr. Seuss. They all illustrate the style, humor and silliness that he tends to portray in his literature. These stories usually become wildly popular because of their silly nature but usually have a moral message to the story as well.

The book opens up with the story of Yertle the Turtle, a turtle who is king of the pond and realizes that his pond is so small; his throne of stone is not tall at all. He rounds up his turtle friends who climb on top of each other to create a new make-shift throne so Yertle can see further and rule further than just the boundaries of the pond. He is pleased... for a time, until he wants his throne higher so he can see more. When a small turtle on the bottom, named Mack, starts complaining about pain from having so many turtles stacked on top of him, Yertle is unsympathetic and orders 200 turtles to stack on top of each other. Eventually they topple over and the story ends with "all the turtles are free / As turtles and, maybe, all creatures should be." The underlying message is that there should not be one ruler that decides everything. People should have freedom and choices for themselves.

The following two stories feature Gertrude McFuzz who learns about beauty and intelligence and the rabbit and bear who learn about bragging and how everyone has their own talents. The artwork accompanies these stories in the classic Dr. Seuss design. All three of these stories are fantasy, which is clear by the content, but the format is through poetry because all of Dr. Seuss' work rhymes throughout.

Grades: 3-5