A review by octavia_cade
The Lorax by Dr. Seuss

emotional hopeful inspiring sad fast-paced

5.0

It's taken me decades to read this, and I'm sorry I didn't read it sooner. I had a vague idea of what it was about, and of course that part of it that everyone knows - "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not." - is engraved in my brain. (I think it's the period after "get better" that makes that passage, ensuring the two words that follow are short and declarative and so very effective.) The other thing that stuck out to me, though, is the "someone like you" part, because it's so deeply unfair. The businessman who has wrecked the world and killed off all the trees has some sort of remorse going on, clearly, but not enough to change his actions while it might have mattered... and not even enough to improve afterwards, when he had the only remaining seed left and still couldn't be arsed to try and fix what he'd done.

On the one hand it's infuriating, and on the other it sadly seems more prescient with every passing year. Greedy, irredeemable selfishness all the way through. I wish picture books didn't have to prepare kids for that, but unfortunately that's the world.