Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss

In honor of today being Dr. Seuss' birthday I've decided to feature one of his books.  Green Eggs and Ham has been a favorite of ours for many years.  I can recite just about the whole book from memory from having read it so many times over the years.  Anna has the tag reader book of Green Eggs and Ham and she has spent hours with the book.

Sam-Am-I tries to convince his friend to try green eggs and ham but his friend states emphatically that he does not like green eggs and ham, even though he's never actually tried them.  Sam keeps at him until he finally gives in and tries them and discovers he does like them after all.

This is a great book to read just for fun, but it's also great to read to picker eaters to help them realize that maybe they might like something that they think they don't, if they would just try it.

A really interesting thing about this book is that it is written using just 50 words!  Here's the story from a Dr. Seuss tribute page at CNN

Bennett Cerf, Dr. Seuss' editor, bet him that he couldn't write a book using 50 words or less. "The Cat in the Hat" was pretty simple, after all, and it used 225 words. Not one to back down from a challenge, Mr. Geisel started writing and came up with "Green Eggs and Ham" -- which uses exactly 50 words. 

The 50 words, by the way, are: a, am, and, anywhere, are, be, boat, box, car, could, dark, do, eat, eggs, fox, goat, good, green, ham, here, house, I, if, in, let, like, may, me, mouse, not, on, or, rain, Sam, say, see, so, thank, that, the, them, there, they, train, tree, try, will, with, would, you.

The few words used and the repetition of the words makes it a great book to use with beginning readers.

To find out more about Dr. Seuss and his books visit Seussville.  I found the site a bit slow to load and switch from page to page but found his biography very interesting.  There appear to be some fun things on the site, if you don't mind waiting from them to load.  You can create your own who character and in the Game and Activities Section there are some games and activities for the Green Eggs and Ham book.

While I don't love all of Dr. Seuss' books, I do like some, and Green Eggs and Ham happens to be one of these.  We'd love to hear what your favorite Dr. Seuss book is.

Vote for your Favorite Books Featured during February? 
Join the March Reading Challenge for a chance to win a prize!
Check out the Newsletter blog to read the March Newsletter and find out who the winners were for last month's Reading Challenge.  While you're there sign up to have the monthly newsletter delivered to your email address or blog reader.