The Beatles are universally regarded as the embodiment of a rock and roll band. In terms of classic rock albums, they could well be called the Dr. Seuss of pop. Decades after their breakup and John Lennon’s subsequent assassination, The Beatles Anthology was released which included several previously unreleased songs. Not an entire album’s worth, certainly, but a handful. None of those songs have yet moved into line to take the place of classics like “Yesterday” or “Hey Jude.” As unlikely as that is to ever happen, even more unlikely is that one day an entire unreleased album will one day be discovered and even more unlikely is that that if it should, it would be considered equitable alongside The White Album or Sgt. Pepper. To paraphrase, Dr. Ian Malcolm’s legendary advice in Jurassic Park: just because you doesn’t mean you should.
What Pet Should I Get was written Seuss sometime in the late 1950’s/early 1960’s, the Golden Age of Dr. Seuss. It was during this stretch of time that the world was introduced to a certain Cat in the Hat, The Grinch, Sam-I-Am, Sneetches, and some very colorful fish. What Pet Should I Get would not be rediscovered and published until the 21st century. It is the literary equivalent of discovering an album that the Beatles chose not to release between Revolver and Abbey Road. If they chose not to release it, there was probably a good reason and their reasons should be respected.
The same holds true for Dr. Seuss. For whatever reason, he had never completed What Pet Should I Get and therefore chose not to make it part of that incredible stretch marking the high point of his illustrious career. While the argument can be strongly made that the world should not be denied a new Dr. Seuss book if such a thing is at all possible—even more than half a decade after it was written—there is an even strong argument to be made. Call it the Right Thing Hunch: it is the right thing to do to honor the wishes of a creative artist regarding his own decision regarding the quality of his work. With two exceptions, that is. The first being, obviously, that the author was simply too harsh in the self-evaluation and could not realize that he had actually written one of the best things in his career. The other exception would be if the passage of the years had so changed society and the cultural zeitgeist that what was too far ahead of its time at the moment of composition had finally found its moment to be revealed to the world.
What Pet Should I Get is far from a disaster nor should it be considered alongside the more obvious interior works of Dr. Seuss. However, it is also not in the same league with those books which the man himself did choose to publish during that Golden Age. The author went out in a blaze of glory with Oh the Places You’ll Go! becoming the last book published while he alive. While it is never not a good thing to have a new Seuss book added to the shelf, it really would have been a greater tribute to the genius of Seuss to allow the honor of being the last book on the right to the last book he himself wanted to see published.
