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Books like If I Ran the Zoo

If I Ran the Zoo

2003Dr. Seuss

2.7/5

It’s nice to have a zany sense of humour - most of the time!Dr. Seuss, of course, was a master of zaniness. And If I Ran the Zoo takes Zany to new limits. In it, a little kid named McGrew dreams of turning the town zoo into a home for mythical, magical beasts - who become more and more weird with each turning page.Now I know why I always had an off-the-wall sense of humour!Too much Dr. Seuss did it - back in those dreary and repressive 1950’s. I was like a tot who’s always high on sugar!In later life I would pay for those highs in my life, and learn a valuable lesson from them...Mike was the name of the bright and capable young man who used to work for me, back in the long-ago office days of my mid-career.One day my director contacted me to say Mike had been promoted, and he wanted to give him the good news in his office.Well, with my downright ugly sense of humour I suggested we play a bit of a joke on poor Mike...I was the officer in charge of directorate office inventory, on top of my project load - the inventory work meant keeping tabs on furniture and more valuable items - and Mike did most of the hands-on tabulating.Dumb me - I suggested (concocting my outrageous joke) that the director call the meeting for the purpose of finding some missing computer hardware, and figuring out who was responsible for the theft!Meaning the prime unmentioned suspect was Mike.Well, we pulled that ugly joke off - but Mike never respected me again because of it. Rightfully so - my dumb bipolar antics always had a mean streak!However, those days are now history. And, you know, books like Dr. Seuss’s, full of outrageous beasties, were common in the distant history of medieval times...They were called Bestiaries, and each magical beast came with a moral. The Griffin, for example - half eagle, half lion - was a symbol of the Lord on Judgement Day.Yikes.I’m sure He’ll make some mention to me of my badly played prank on that day! Stuff which I’d like to say I never did. If only my role model, Dr. Seuss, had embedded more valuable life lessons for kids into his stories! But genius charts its own course, as always, and Dr. Seuss was a free spirit.And the moral of my long story?Sure, you can be a little zany...But never use your practical jokes to make someone else’s life miserable!

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