The Statistical Dominance of Dr. Seuss | Hacker News Reader

The Statistical Dominance of Dr. Seuss

priceonomics.com

I know it's not very scientific, and therefore I can understand the article leaving it out, but a big reason for this dominance could be attributed to consistency of quality.

I have a 5 year old daughter and an 8 month old son. We read at least 20 minutes a day with them and sometimes more. That adds up to a lot of books over 5 years, especially when you consider that some of these books only take 5-10 minutes to read.

The truth is most children's books are "bad" from an adult perspective (not that the kids care). The art is amateurish, bland, or uninspired. The stories are cliche and boring. I know it sounds silly to say such things about children's literature...

Until you pick up some of the best work by Dr. Seuss. It's like comparing Pixar to Saturday morning cartoons. Seuss' illustration is original and engaging. The Wordplay is fantastic. The stories' morals are layered and complex (Every entrepreneur and consumer on this board should read The Star Belly Sneetches immediately, if it's been more than a handful of years) which is crazy considering the simplicity of it all.

It's not all gold, Dr. Seuss' body of work is massive and naturally there are hits and misses. But the hits are ingenious and work on multiple levels for multiple audiences. And the misses aren't bad. It's like your straight-A student bringing home a B.

He's not the only game in town, of course, for timeless and truly ageless (ages 1-death) literature. Shel Silverstein gives him a real run for his money (and has a wicked subversive streak that Seuss is lacking, if that's your thing).

Anyway, as a parent the durability of Seuss' body of work is easy to understand with the sociology and marketing analysis hijinks. The statistical dominance is quite impressive, and is surely a result of these multipliers acting on a product of unmatched quality.

>dominance could be attributed to quality. The truth is that most children's books are "bad"

I couldn't agree more. We get about ten to fifteen children's books a week from the library and I'm utterly amazed that most have been published. The ones that are part of a more common series are usually much better. The llama llama mad at mama sort of books. Dr Suess definitely falls into this higher quality bracket. Many times I have wondered if they spend more time writing the about author section then they do the book. I see this as a market that could use some serious improvement.

Dr. Seuss had quite a few D's and F's - but that didn't slow him down. His "5000 fingers" film was a flop. His attempts to produce works for an adult audience went nowhere.

But he never, ever quit. And he had extremely high standards. As a result, some of his funniest and most creative work was seen only in newspaper ads and trade shows.

He also had a run of amazing editorial cartoons during WWII (Dr. Seuss Goes to War is a great collection of them.)

I was looking for a link to The Sneetches you mentioned.

Found this: http://www.csun.edu/faculty/sheena.malhotra/GRCS-Files/Final... (It's missing the illustrations obviously but still a gread read.)

Without wishing to detract too much from the greatness of these books it feels like they should be out of copyright.

But no, we can look forward to another 40 years of Random House rent-taking and calendar - 'tie-in's before that happens. Sigh.

Oh, the jobs people work at! Out west near Hawtch-Hawtch there's a Hawtch-Hawtcher bee watcher, his job is to watch. Is to keep both his eyes on the lazy town bee, a bee that is watched will work harder you see. So he watched and he watched, but in spite of his watch that bee didn't work any harder not mawtch. So then somebody said "Our old bee-watching man just isn't bee watching as hard as he can, he ought to be watched by another Hawtch-Hawtcher! The thing that we need is a bee-watcher-watcher!". Well, the bee-watcher-watcher watched the bee-watcher. He didn't watch well so another Hawtch-Hawtcher had to come in as a watch-watcher-watcher! And now all the Hawtchers who live in Hawtch-Hawtch are watching on watch watcher watchering watch, watch watching the watcher who's watching that bee. You're not a Hawtch-Watcher you're lucky you see! — Dr. Suess

I've seen this referenced more than once as a programmer.

How and why does J.K. Rowling count as 'children's books'?

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