Today's Article - Green Eggs and Ham

This article is for quizzes on Tuesday March 8th...

Green Eggs and Ham is a best-selling and critically acclaimed children's book by Dr. Seuss, first published on August 12, 1960. As of 2001, according to Publishers Weekly, it was the fourth best-selling English-language children's book of all time. The story has appeared in several adaptations starting with 1973's Dr. Seuss on the Loose starring Paul Winchell as the voice of both Sam-I-Am and the first-person narrating man.

A character known as "Sam-I-Am" pesters another man who also serves as the story's narrator, to try a dish of green eggs and ham. He refuses, responding, " I do not like them, Sam-I-Am. I do not like green eggs and ham." He continues to repeat this as Sam follows him, encouraging him to eat them in eight locations (House, box, car, tree, train, dark, rain, boat), with three animals (Mouse, fox, goat) all to which he still refuses, responding, "I do not like them here (Current location) or there (Previous location). I do not like them anywhere." Finally, he gives in to Sam's pestering and samples the green eggs and ham, which he does like after all and happily responds, "I do so like green eggs and ham. Thank you. Thank you, Sam-I-Am."

Green Eggs and Ham is one of Seuss's "Beginner Books", written in a very simple vocabulary for beginning readers. The vocabulary of the text consists of just 50 different words and was the result of a bet between Seuss and Bennett Cerf (Dr. Seuss's publisher) that Seuss (after completing The Cat in the Hat using 236 words) could not complete an entire book without exceeding that limit. The 50 words are: a, am, and, anywhere, are, be, boat, box, car, could, dark, do, eat, eggs, fox, goat, good, green, ham, here, house, I, if, in, let, like, may, me, mouse, not, on, or, rain, Sam, say, see, so, thank, that, the, them, there, they, train, tree, try, will, with, would, you.