Customer Reviews

Oh, the Thinks You Can Think! (Bright & Early Board Books(TM))

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book was one of the five that I most enjoyed reading to our four children when they were young. Upon rereading the book, I bgan to realize why I enjoyed it so much . . . as well as why they did.

Children begin with quite vivid imaginations, and education (and the socializing process) quickly discourage their imaginations in favor of coloring between the lines (following the conformist rules). This wonderful book by Dr. Seuss extolls the creative process and liberates the child (and the parent) to use their imaginations. "THINK! You can think any THINK that you wish . . . Think of a race on a horse on a ball with a fish!" It's like getting a license to use your natural creativity.

The book encourages creativity in a variety of effective ways. As the above quote shows, juxtaposition (combined with wonderfully funny illustrations) can allow the child to see that words can be jumbled together in ways to create fantastic images. The book begins and ends with this method.

Through the book, the illustrations are drawn to highlight the unusual. Many different colors are combined, in odd ways, and in odd shapes.

Then, after the imagination is revved up a bit, Dr. Seuss begins to do mental pirouettes by introducing such creatures as GUFFS (fuzzy orange creatures with tails that have large furry balls along them them), SNUVS (yellow creatures wearing color mismatched gloves -- you can see how the name sometimes helps with the rhyming), BLOOGS (green, yellow, and blue creatures blowing by in the white sky above the black water), and ZONGS (with a tail that is 15 times as long as the body which winds among blue and pink mushrooms).

Of course, the visions are sometimes more literal: Kitty O'Sullivan Krauss diving into a balloon pool over her house.

I thought that the RINK-RINKER-FINK and the VIPPER of VIPP were especially wonderful inventions. They juxtapose many different concepts in a particularly mind-liberating way.

If any book can overcome you tradition, misconception, and disbelief stalls, this one is it. By sharing it with your children while they are young, you can keep them from ever developing the stalls in the first place.

This delightfully illustrated, simply readable, and wonderfully silly volume is one of my favorite of Seuss. It uses simple rhymes and easy words perfect either for parents to read aloud, or for beginning readers to read by themselves.

Unlike Green Eggs and Ham and many of his other stories, this book follows no storyline, but simply takes children (and their parents) on a delightful journey of the imagination.

Oh, the Thinks You Can Think! Is a charming book by the immortal Dr. Seuss who wrote many fine children's books in his time. Oh, the Thinks You Can Think! is no exception. This book encourages children to imagine and eventually explore the world without fear.

The book has excellent illustrations that amuse children--and adults; and the rhyming text always impresses me.

The book starts by encouraging children to use their imaginations to think up what other animals and/or places in the world may be like. This alone can stimulate a lot of conversation between you and your child about other places in the real world and what life is like there. This will go a long way toward teaching younger children about the world out there that one day they will be exploring for real. In addition, the book also has Dr. Seuss using his own imagination to give examples to children as to how to use their imaginations; we get words about foreign things and sounds like "guff" and "schlopp." This does a marvelous job of teaching children to always be optimistic.

The book has even more value. Younger children will profit from learning words critical to their growing vocabularies including yellow, blue, red, pink, black, white, night, day, left and right--and more! Excellent.

The book cover withstands some throwing around just in case your child accidentally mistreats it; and, as always, the paper quality of these books by Dr. Seuss is very good.

I highly recommend this fine children's book. It teaches much to both very young children and older children as well. Get this and enjoy it with your growing child!

What a cute book! This book greatly inspires little ones to use their imaginations and think up all sorts of things. This book also reminds me of a story in Seuss' book, "I can Lick 30 Tigers Today," in which the Cat-in-the-Hat's daughter uses her imagination to think up a Glunk. That's a pretty funny story too. Anyway, in this tale, there really isn't a storyline at all. Just page after page of silly drawings of things that don't exist mostly (like how much water can 55 purple elephants drink?). My little one recognizes Seuss' drawings and always tells me that's 55 Hortons drinking water! Or, how about "schlopp. Schlopp, schlopp, beautiful schlopp. Beautiful schlopp with a cherry on top." And what on earth is a jibboo anyway? A bird's head on a human body, walking down a dark street? This book is filled with very silly things such as this, none of which make sense, but all of which cause little ones to use their imaginations. It's a great time reading this one aloud and ours gets read nightly.

Highly recommend!

I bought this book for myself as an adult, I just loved the crazy rhymes and drawings. Some of the pages in particular really grab the imagination, like the wacky Seuss house with the bathroom up there and the bedroom up here. I'd love to have my own Dr Seuss-inspired home! The rhymes in Dr Seuss' books are always spot-on, it really is poetry. Now that my son is three, he can appreciate "Oh, The Thinks You Can Think" with me. Overall, one of my favourite picture books.

The wildest Dr. Seuss book! Probably overlooked because we Americans are wary of messages about using one's imagination, but it is the most vivid, outlandish romp the Doctor ever wrote.

In the grand scheme of things this book is a classic, but not on a par with 'Green Eggs and Ham', 'Marvin K Mooney...', 'The Digging-est Dog' or many of the other offerings that Dr Seuss has. At least according to my 2 year old nightly book selection.

This is a wonderful book. It might not be the very best of Seuss, but it has all the trademark silliness and inventiveness, and very readable wordplay that is so attactive to so many kids. It's one of the simpler of the Seuss books, not as simple as "Green Eggs and Ham" but not as complex as "Horton Hears a Who." The theme of the book is imagination, and what you can think (dream) up. The littlest kids, who aren't yet engaging in pretend play and demonstrating their own rich imagination, might not get the message, but they'll still appreciate and learn from the language.

While this is not quite Dr. Seuss' most inspirational book, it is certainly up there and is the type of book happily devoted to creativity. The illustrations are fun and silly, as is the text, but there is still that smidgen of proper Seussian wisdom.

The book oh, the thinks you can think is about all the things you can think about when you have nothing to do. It is about things that Dr. Seuss has made up things that he has thought of at one time, I think this is a good book because it can help kids think of things or anything they want to be when their older, the book has good easy sentances to read it is really something to think about