"Children becoming bored by books is a perennial problem - especially in a world with huge amounts of distractions. Stories need something on every page to hold their interest and keep them reading."
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Horton Hears a Who! is the latest big-screen adaptation of a classic children's picturebook to hit a cinema near you. Published in 1954, it's quintessential Dr Seuss, telling the tale of an elephant's fight to save a community living on a speck of dust!
In the same year in the US, Life magazine published a report which concluded that children were not learning to read because their books were boring. Accordingly, Dr Seuss's (aka Theodore Seuss Geisel) publisher drew up a list of 400 key words, asked Seuss to cut the list to 250 and write a book using only those words. The result - using 220 of the words - was everyone's favourite feline: The Cat in the Hat. This book was a huge success, retaining the distinctive illustrative style, rhythms and all the wildy imaginative power of Seuss's earlier works, but because of its simplified vocabulary could be read by fledgling readers.
Children becoming bored by books is a perennial problem - especially in a world with huge amounts of distractions. Stories need something on every page to hold their interest and keep them reading - and as Dr Seuss illustrates perfectly, it's not the amount of words you use, but the way you use them!
Happy writing!
