I never thought I'd find myself admitting to this, but I think I'm finally sick and tired of Dr. Seuss. Our four-year-old has developed an obsession with the late Doctor's works and we've been indulging it in keeping with the theory of "Anything That Encourages Literacy Has to Be Good." As an adult, I think Dr. Seuss books are one of the pleasures of reading to your children. With so many dull children's books out there, especially those derived from TV shows (Elmo, or, even worse, Dora the Explorer) or derivatives of past-their-prime book series (Clifford, anyone?), Dr. Seuss books are a joy to read, with even the simpler ones like the seemingly basic Hop On Pop being at least fun to read, and seminal works like The Cat in the Hat and How the Grinch Stole Christmas coming off as high art.

Anyhow, the Cat in the Hat and the Grinch have been fixtures in our house for quite a few months, with a veritable Grinch frenzy culminating at Christmas. This was stoked by repeated readings of the story, followed by a viewing of the classic Chuck Jones animated version, followed subsequently with numerous listenings to the album of aforementioned Chuck Jones version downloaded off of iTunes, followed by a surprise encounter with the Grinch costumed character in the Borders bookstore in San Rafael. The awful, miserable Hollywood Grinch feature with Jim Carrey was pretty much banned from the house, as it was just too incomprehensible and awful and miserable to watch.

The last straw was putting the Dr. Seuss audio material on our iPod to play through the car stereo during a road trip last week down to the Monterey area. We played the Grinch album repeatedly at the request of the back-seat passengers, figuring that it kept them quiet and reduced the amount of "are we there yets," which it did. Unfortunately, though, Dr. Seuss's words have permeated my brain, and probably displaced important information that I needed to remember, such as project deadlines for work and my ATM card PIN number. At work today, these words kept running through my head: 

Look at me!
Look at me!
Look at me now!
It is fun to have fun,
But you have to know how.

Which is all well and good, but not really something I wanted to have running through my head over and over again until it assumed a mantra-like form. When I tried to banish it from my thoughts, it was instantly replaced by other Seuss rhyme, such as

Then they'd feast,
And they'd feast,
And they'd feast, feast, FEAST, FEAST!
They'd feast on Who pudding
And rare Who roast beast.

which may or may not be 100% accurate, since I'm typing this from memory.

Anyhow, I decided then that I'd probably had enough. I'm observing a strict Seuss-avoidance policy for at least a week, or until a small child physically forces a Dr. Seuss book into my hands and asks me to read it, which has been known to happen. I think I'm pretty much doomed...