If I Ran the Zoo

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If I Ran the Zoo is a children's book written by Dr. Seuss in 1950.

The book is written in anapestic tetrameter, Seuss's usual verse type, and illustrated in Seuss's trademark pen and ink style. The book is likely a tribute to a child's imagination, because it ends with a reminder that all of the extraordinary creatures exist only in McGrew's head.

If I Ran the Zoo is credited with inventing the word "nerd" with the sentence "And then, just to show them, I'll sail to Ka-Troo/And Bring Back an It-Kutch a Preep and a Proo/A Nerkle a Nerd and a Seersucker, too!"

In the book, Gerald McGrew is a kid who, when visiting a zoo, finds that the exotic animals are "not good enough". He says that if he ran the zoo, he would let all of the current animals free and find new, more bizarre and exotic ones. Throughout the book he lists these creatures, starting with a lion with ten feet and escalating to more imaginative (and imaginary) creatures, such as the Fizza-ma-Wizza-ma-Dill, "the world's biggest bird from the island of Gwark, who eats only pine trees, and spits out the bark." The illustrations also grow wilder as McGrew imagines going to increasingly remote and exotic habitats and capturing each fanciful creature, and brings them all back to a zoo now filled with his wild new animals. He also imagines the praise he receives from others, who are amazed at his "new Zoo, McGrew Zoo".

Some of the animals featured in "If I Ran the Zoo" have been featured in a segment of The Hoober-Bloob Highway, a 1974 Television Special on CBS. In this segment, Hoober-Bloob babies don't have to be human if they don't choose to be, so Mr. Hoober-Bloob shows them a variety of different animals, including ones from "If I Ran The Zoo", such as Obsks, Bippo-No-Bungus, a Tizzle-Top-Tufted Mazurka, and an Elephant-Cat, as well as more obscure ones like a "Tizzle-Top-Tufted Salubrian Snipe", a "Six-Footed Foddle", and the "Hamica-Shlipica-Shlopica-Shlo". The first one ends with the signature phrase, "On the Other Hand Though", the second, "On the Other Hand, Other Hand, Though", the third, "On the Other Hand, Other Hand, OTHER Hand, Though". The segment ends with all the animals appearing on a board to the following tune:

But On the Other Hand, Other Hand, Other, Other, Other Hand,

Still Another and Another and Another Hand,

On the Other and the Other and Another Hand,

On the Other Hand, Other, Other, Other Hand,

On the Other Hand, Though!

If the chosen occupant is still considering going to Earth as a human, they take another look at what would happen if they went there.

Dr Seuss's "If I Ran the Zoo" book is also the main theme for one of the children's play areas at Universal Studios' Islands of Adventure. The small play area is located inside the area of the park known as Seuss Landing, and is themed in the Seussean way Dr Seuss is famous for.