Fuse 8 n’ Kate: Marvin K. Mooney Will You Please Go Now! by Dr. Seuss

An orange fellow is told to leave over and over and over again. So it clearly has nothing to do with the state of the world today. As I mention on today’s podcast episode, when it finally occurred to me to have Kate read this book, I was slightly worried that maybe it would no longer be timely. HA HA! No worries there! I go through all the political ties it has had to world leaders, and Kate brings up the peculiar aspect of watching someone berate a little cute guy into leaving. I mean, whose side are we supposed to be on here? “This poor cutie-patootie”. If you’ve never listened to one of our podcasts before, I might recommend this as a place to start. It’s a lot of fun.

Listen to the whole show here on Soundcloud or download it through iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, PlayerFM, or your preferred method of podcast selection.

Show Notes:

My Mooney info about whether or not this book had any direct ties to calls for Richard Nixon to resign can be found on pages 20 and 21 of the book Wild Things: Acts of Mischief in Children’s Literature which I co-wrote with Jules Danielson and Peter Sieruta. I don’t read all of it on the show so if you’d like to hear more, you know where to go.

Kate is correct. The way the title is laid out on the cover, it really does look like it was a book called Will You Please Go Now! by Marvin K. Mooney. It’s also funny that it’s a question with an exclamation point at the end.

Clearly the narrator is related to The Onceler in The Lorax. Meanwhile Marvin is wearing a “natty little slanket”.

It even has pockets!

I just love Kate’s description of what a “Zike-Bike” is this: “For those of you who aren’t familiar with what a Seuss Zike-Bike is, just imagine a tandem bike with no seats and a third wheel.” “Is that a metaphor, Kate?”

Soooo… how is this a car? What is our definition of what a car consists of? Because I don’t think legs come into it.

“Imagine this angel baby in a mail carrier sack with a stamp on his forehead . . .” Kate tears up.

Kate is the first human being in the history of the universe to look at this book and question the Ga-Zoom’s power source.

And now we know precisely how long it takes to get Marvin out of your home. Mystery solved! Here is the watch both at the beginning and at the end of the book.

Yeah. I think you could make a good Donald J. Trump Will You Please Go Now! mock picture book but this is not it.

Interested in that puzzle Kate mentioned? Feel free to purchase it here.

Meanwhile here’s a link to that Bill Nye podcast Science Rocks where he talks with Yuval Noah Harari about the roll of storytelling in the development of the human species. If you’re an author and want to justify your existence on earth, this will help.

Filed under: Fuse 8 n' Kate