McElligot's Pool by Dr. Seuss

Amazon.com Review: McElligot's Pool is a Seuss classic from the distant era before even The Cat In The Hat. It's a single poetic variation on the theme of adult skepticism that's no match for childhood faith and daydreaming. A small boy is fishing in the tiny, unpromising McElligot's Pool, a puddle that (as a passing farmer informs our diminutive hero) is nothing but a hole where people dispose of their junk. But the boy is all optimism: what if the pool is deeper than anyone thinks? What if it connects to an underground stream that flows under the town to the sea? Might not all sorts of fish then swim up the stream and be caught here? "I might catch an eel... (Well, I might. It depends.) A long twisting eel with a lot of strange bends. And, oddly enough, with a head at both ends!" The moral of the story is straightforward: "If I wait long enough, if I'm patient and cool, Who knows what I'll catch in McElligot's pool?"

First line:
"Young man," laughed the farmer,
"You're sort of a fool!
You'll never catch fish
in McElligot's Pool!"

My thoughts: This book was first published in 1947. Once again we follow Marco (From And To Think I Saw It on Mulberry Street) on an imaginative quest. When told there is nothing in the pool he imagines what could be. The delightful illustrations, which alternate between watercolors and B&W, picturing the ever more fantastic fish that might be in the pool are wonderful to look at. As always, Dr. Seuss' rhyming lines and nonsense words make this fun to read.