When I was a kid my parents gave me this book and I remember enjoying it a lot. However for some reason I remembered Yertle being a girl, since the name rhymes with Myrtle. So King Yertle was a girl. It's funny the things you carry with you from childhood into adulthood.

This review is part of the Read Across America write off hosted by Debbie26. A list of other participants can be found at the end of this review.

This book has three stories. Yertle the Turtle, Gertrude McFuzz, and The Big Brag. Each has a moral.

In Yertle the Turtle, Yertle is a king and he wants to rule all he sees so he tells all the turtles to climb on each others backs to raise him up. He remains unsatisfied and wants more and more turtles, until the turtle at the very bottom burps and it shakes the tower of turtles knocking Yertle into the mud, where he rules from then on. And all the turtles are free again.

In Gertrude McFuzz, Gertrude is a girl bird with a small single droopy tail feather. When she sees another bird with two she talks to her uncle who tells her about a bush with berry pills which grow tail feathers. She goes there and when she has two feather she isn't satisfied. She wants more so she eats and eats until her tail is big and full of feathers she can't lift it to fly off. Other birds carry her home and plunk out all the feathers but one. And then she is happy with her lone feather.

The Big Brag is about a rabbit who says outloud that he is the best of the beast. A bear overhears and disagrees. The rabbit says he can hear better. The bear says he can smell better. And then a little worm pops up and says he can see better than them. He looks far and says he sees past Japan and England, all the way around the world back the hill they are on where he sees two fools arguing about who is best. Those two fools being the rabbit and the bear. And then the worm goes back in his hole.

I liked all the stories and they are great fun to read aloud, with all the sentences ending in rhymes, like rule and mule, cat and that. Each page has 2 to 11 lines of text and they words are black on a white background making them easy to read. I would say the reading level is for ages 8-10, but it is a great book to have read to you. I plan to read this to my children in the future.

The illustrations are done in the typical, recognizable Dr. Seuss style. There is not a lot of realism, but the scenes are easy to understand, when taken along with the text. There are only three colors used, black, green and blue. The turtles have blue shells and swim in a green pond. Gertrude's tail feathers are blue and green, and the mountains in a big brag are in a light blue color.

Overall I really enjoyed this book. Children will love the rhythm this book has when read aloud. It was a classic for me and I am sure it is for others. I recommend this book highly.

The other participants in this writeoff are:
wifeofvolsfan My Book about Me: By Me, Myself
kamel622 - Hop On Pop
vbanuelos - Great Day for Up!
ed_grover - King & King
Jadzia66 - How The Grinch Stole Christmas
marybatson - The Foot Book
sleeper54 - Daisy-Head Mayzie
dramastef - Nina's Waltz
Debbie26 - The Little Engine That Could
brendan2 - Butter Milk
kelly60 - Paul Bunyan

Recommended: Yes