Do you remember when you were growing up that you had any number of invisible friends? Maybe it was because your brothers or sisters didn’t have time to play with you on a certain day. Maybe they were too old. Maybe you just wanted to be alone once in awhile but not that alone. Whatever the reason, most of us had them. I use to take mine with me hunting in the woods. If I thought about what could happen to a small boy deep in the woods, I might have been too afraid to go. But with my ‘friends’ everything was okay.

Certainly if Jimmy Stewart can have a 6 foot invisible rabbit for a friend, why can you have a few extra friends from time to time.

That’s what Dr. Seuss is explaining to us parents in There’s a Wocket in my Pocket! This book explains to parents and children alike that it’s okay to have those imaginary friends because Dr. Seuss talks about them.

Under that silly pretense we are introduced to a whole host of fanciful characters.

A Wasket in the basket

A Zelf up on a shelf

A Nink in the sink

The Geeling on the Ceiling and many others

Of course not all of these characters are friendly. Watch out for

The Yottle in the Bottle

That Bofa on the Sofa

The Nooth Grush on the tooth brush and a few others

My daughter especially likes when I read down the list of the Tellar, Nellar, Gellar, Dellar, Bellar, Wellar, and Zellar in the cellar! I usually do this starting slowly and building in speed until I am racing through the last couple as I point at the characters. Then I’ll stop, get a puzzled look on my face and say, “Or is it …” and race through the entire list 2 or 3 more times while pointing to the 7 characters in a different order. Before you know it we are laughing and pointing to different characters as I name each in turn. There is no right or wrong in this exercise in silliness. It just makes us both feel good to laugh and it’s become a bit of a tradition with this book.

From an educational aspect, this book is all about teaching children about rhymes. I know all Dr Seuss books are presented in an almost lyrical way but this book exists for this one reason. And my daughter realizes it. About the third time I was reading this to her she said “Daddy, the things all rhyme with where they live!”

As you can see from the examples listed above, Dr Seuss is a firm believer in giving all letters of the alphabet equal time. In normal conversation, certain letters like Q, W, X, and Z don’t come up very often so they are harder for children to learn. In this whimsical house, all of the less used letters surface to the top to give children plenty of opportunity to learn their sounds and pronunciation.

This is a Bright and Early Book and most children will be able to read it by age 5 or 6 with little difficulty. With garage sale and tag sale season getting ready to begin, keep your eyes open for this delight. We picked up our copy for 10 cents 2 years ago.

As with any Dr Seuss book, you can’t go wrong with this one. The characters are drawn in typical Seuss fashion with bright colors and elongated body parts.

Parents, take a step back in time to when you were a child and reach way back into the recesses of your mind and say hello to some of your childhood invisible friends, have them sit down beside you, and then read this book to your child(ren).

Thanks for reading!!




Recommended: Yes