I received this book for free from the library in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Source: the library
You're Only Old Once!
by
Dr. Seuss
satire in Hardcover edition that was published by Random House on February 12, 1986 and has 56 pages.
Explore it on Goodreads or Amazon
Other books by this author which I have reviewed include Sneetches and Other Stories, Horton Hatches the Egg & Horton Hears a Who!, Green Eggs and Ham, The Bippolo Seed and Other Lost Stories, The Lorax, Hooray for Diffendoofer Day!, Daisy-Head Mayzie, Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose, The King's Stilts, Scrambled Eggs Super!, Bartholomew and the Oobleck, Horton and the Kwuggerbug and More Lost Stories, My Many Colored Days, McElligot's Pool, If I Ran the Circus, Sleep Book, I Can Lick 30 Tigers Today! and Other Stories, I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew, Oh, the Places You’ll Go!
It’s Everyman for himself in this tale for adults. Yes, that’s what I said. It’s a story for oldsters who could use a rueful laugh. I want to say it’s a fantasy, but I’d be lyin’, lol, about this satire on aging.
My Take
Oh, man, just reading the blurb on the inside flap had me laughing. Yes, I’d said that Seuss is quite right about this being a book for adults. I especially “enjoyed” the Eyesight Test — be sure to read it.
The pictures are typical Seuss with his cheery colors and silly scenes.
Oh, yes, it’s La-La Land for us oldsters who want strong teeth, no doctors, and live to be a hundred and three, lol. Spleen Readjustment and Muffler Repair. We all know the hassles of doctors questioning us about Great-aunt Rose and her ills and how old was she when she died. Of what did she die, by the way? And was it afternoon, morning, or the dead of night?
The doctors and nurses who won’t tell. The interns who poke and look.
As for that treadmill…you’ll be grateful for your own! Then there’s the Diet-Devising Computerized Sniffer…the results of that test will simply depress.
Those pills they prescribe? Oh, yeah, it’s that litany of when and where and how to take the plethora of pills.
The Story
It’s a very long day as Everyman goes to the doctorsssssss.
The Characters
Everyman has reached 70 with all the ills that implies. Norval is the fish in the hall who has to listen to his pains. Whelden is the orderly and Wheeler who pushes you about. Once you’ve “graduated”, of course.
The Cover and Title
The cover has a cream floor for a background with blue doors at the top and three doctors peeking out, their stethoscopes dangling. At the bottom is Whelden in his creamy yellow boilersuit, quite smug as he pushes Everyman, a balding old man with his fringe of white hair and bushy mustache, wearing a yellow short-sleeved bathrobe with blue trim. It’s an odd sort of tricycle in which he sits with its big yellow and pink wheels.
The title is a relief that You’re Only Old Once!!
