Shake your brain! Stretch out your tongue!
Seuss is ready to make you feel young.
It's Knox and box and chicks with clocks.
But first and foremost it's Fox in Socks.

The book came out in 'sixty-five.
It tickled our fancy and jumbled our jive.
With so many wonky words to wrangle,
We couldn't quite get our tongues untangled.

Fox plays lots of verbal tricks,
His tongue, you know, is very slick;
But his target, poor ol' Mr. Knox
Isn't as slick as this fancy fox.

So be most wary, gentle readers!
We know you want to be a speeder,
But if you are a Fox-y stranger,
You may run into tongueish danger.

No sequels from Fox were ever spun
Why not? It's so much stinkin' fun.
But don't you worry, it's all you need
'Cause this fox makes it fun to read.

Let's be honest. Reading to children can be challenging—and we're talking about the wrong type of challenge. Children want to read the same stories over and over (and over) again. The characters continue to learn life lessons you've heard a million and one times. It's great for the kids, sure, but if you haven't yet learned that sharing is caring, then you aren't going to now. And worse, so many children's books employ language that is so simple, so boring, so snooze-inducing. The challenge becomes more about staying awake than anything else.

Thankfully, there's Fox in Socks. This book is—in all the right ways—challenging and child-friendly. Scratch that. It is super challenging—tongue-twister style. We know adults who have been reading this book for years and still haven't gotten it down. Thanks, Seuss, for keeping things interesting.

Why Your Kids Should Care

Kids love to see adults mess up, just an itty-bitty bit. It's nothing sinister, but adults are always telling them how to properly pronounce words, how to sit up straight, and how to brush their teeth. It's just nice to know that even the tall folk aren't "practically perfect in every way".

Fox in Socks is a great book to read to kids because adults and children will mess up whole bunches together. Even after you think you've earned your tongue-twister black belt, you'll still take the occasional hit in your progress through the book. And you know what? That's okay.

It's good to show kids that messing up is perfectly natural. In fact, you need to mess up to learn how to do anything at all, right? Fox in Socks provides a fun, safe, and charming atmosphere for learning to read aloud. Messing up doesn't spoil the fun; it enhances it. And the more you read it, the fewer mistakes you and they will make, demonstrating the old adage "practice makes perfect."

Hey, it may be a cliché, but it got that way for a reason.