Yertle the Turtle and other stories

by Dr. Seuss

Paperback, 2004

Status

Available

Call number

JP E SEU

Publication

London : HarperCollins, 2004.

Original publication date

1958

ISBN

9780007173143

Local notes

Note: There is a set of First Day School Lessons accompanying this book (and other Dr Seuss books): JR BRI large.

Description

Includes three humorous stories in verse: Yertle the Turtle, Gertrude McFuzz, and The Big Brag.

User reviews

LibraryThing member Heather19
A good, funny Dr. Seuss book... and who doesn't love Dr. Suess?
LibraryThing member JoseDelAguila
Illustrations in color. Three modern fables in humorous pictures and verse.
LibraryThing member wordsofpeace421
My young daughters and I love to read this book at bedtime. When Yertle's dictatorship collapses, my 3 year old cheers. This book has universal themes that are good for children of all ages 1-99.
LibraryThing member sdglenn
Fiction. Helps with reading fluency in the classroom. Ilustrations drawn with pastals.Great for grades k-3. A collection of rhyming stories.
LibraryThing member ccondra
Yertle the Turtle has several stories in it. They are all about greed, or boasting and at the end the characters learn a lesson.
LibraryThing member adsinyard
Yertle is the King of all Turtles. He has the turtles to stack on top of each other so that he can be as high as possible, but this isn't comfortable for the others. At the end of the story, the bottom turtle, Mack, burps and Yertle falls into the mud. This is a comical story of a king who doesn't
Show More
have any compassion for others. This leads to him missing out on being the Turtle King. There are also stories about a bragging rabbit and a bird who is dealing with jealousy problems in this book. There are many different book covers for this trio of stories.
Show Less
LibraryThing member cejerry97
Yertle the Turtle is a story about a turtle who wants to be king of everything, so he piles up the turtles of the pond so that he can stand on a throne and see more of the land in order to rule over it. One of the turtles, Mack, gets very frustrated and uncomfortable with all of the turtles being
Show More
stacked on top of him. Mack keeps complaining, and Yertle keeps piling the turtles for his throne higher and higher, until Mack burps and the entire turtle throne falls. The turtles are finally free and Yertle is no longer king of everything, but "only king of the mud."
Show Less
LibraryThing member ljemanuel
This is another great story talking about compromise. A good book for all ages with pictures and different length's of sentences.
LibraryThing member JaclynPoe
This book has a few different themes in it. There is one about being kind to others, liking oneself, and that arguing about things is just silly. I like this book because it teaches children valuable life lessons. I would use this book in my classroom to teach them different morals. I would
Show More
recommend this book to children in grades Pre-K - 5th grade.
Show Less
LibraryThing member McClendon
This book has three stories in it. One is "Yertle the Turtle" about a king turtle who makes other turtles stand on their backs so he can have a tall throne. It gets stack so high, that it falls and Yertle falls into the mud. Another story was "Gertrude McFuzz" about a bird who wanted more feather
Show More
that she had. She became to greedy to get feathers that it weighed her down and she couldn't fly anymore. The last one was called the "Big Brag" about a rabbit who told tall tales and started a competition with a bear and worm, and loses because he lies.
Show Less
LibraryThing member conuly
Well, he certainly had an interest in sharing political views. Whether this is good or bad depends, I guess, on whether you agree with him. He did it in a way that's not too preachy or annoying, that's a point in his favor.

Here we have three stories, whose names I don't care to remember at this
Show More
time. (The book is visiting Grandma with my nieces, so I have to post from memory. Forgive me.)

In the first one - Yertle the Turtle! - we have a grandiose turtle king who insists on stacking all the turtles in his kingdom so he can see more and more and be king of more and more. And so it goes on until the one at the bottom, poor Mack, decides that he has rights too and shakes the whole throne. And now all turtles are free, the way turtles (and all people) are meant to be.

Then we have one about a bird who wants more and more feathers until... okay, I can't remember this one, but it's a moral about selfishness and vanity (I believe).

And the third, which I adore, is about a bear and a rabbit arguing over who is best until they're bested by a worm who claims he can see "all the way around the world" but, alas, all he sees is two big fools with nothing better to do than to argue about who is better than who!

So we have three good stories, three easy morals (two and a half? I cannot, for the life of me, remember that middle moral!), and a nifty green cover. I like this book a lot.

One note: This book is written for school-aged children. Please, don't get it for your baby.
Show Less
LibraryThing member MSmith060511
This is one of my favorite children's books of all time! There are three stories in this book. We usually read it during Read Across America Week. We also try to tie in our animal unit study of reptiles that week.
LibraryThing member ckarmstr1
Yertle the Turtle is very greedy. He abuses his power and takes advantage of the other turtles. He ignores the requests of his "subjects," and he is over"thrown" because one turtle burped. This book illustrates how greed is an evil trait and power is short lived if the power is abused.
LibraryThing member esproull
Yertle the turtle is king of the pond, but one day decides that his throne is too low and he wants to be higher so that he can see much more. Yertle commands all of the other turtles to stand atop one another, so they stack up 40 turtles high with Yertle on top. But this simply isn't good enough
Show More
for Yertle because he is very greedy and wants to see even more. He commands another hundred or so turtles to join the others and lift him higher. One little turtle named Mack speaks up from below and tells King Yertle that his legs are getting tired, he is hungry, and his shell might crack from the weight of all the other turtles. Yertle doesn't care one bit, he just keeps adding more and more turtles to the stack in order to get higher and higher. Eventually, the turtle-stack is too tall and they all come tumbling down. Yertle lands face-first in a puddle of mud and the other turtles just laugh because they know he has gotten what he deserves.
Show Less
LibraryThing member ecosborne
Yertle the Turtle, Gertrude McFuzz, and The Big Brag are the three fun stories in this Dr. Seuss book. Yertle was King of the pond but he wanted to be King of all he could see so he built his throne higher so he could see farther, and farther. In Gertrude McFuzz she wishes to have a tale like
Show More
Lolla-Lee-Lou so she eats berries that make your tale grow however she isn't satisfied and keeps eating until her tale is so long she can't even fly anymore and gets stuck on the mountain with the berries.In the Big Brag both a bear and a rabbit say they are better than the other until an old worm settles the argument by proving he is better than both and that they are silly for arguing. I love Dr.Seuss books and this proved to be another good one. It was interesting to see the hidden moral to the story that I hadn't really noticed before in Dr. Seuss books.
Show Less
LibraryThing member SarahAZ
I really enjoyed reading this book. It's about a turtle, called Yertle, who is a king and forces all the other turtles to stand on one another just so he can climb up and be on top of the world. When he looks out and finds something that is higher than him, he brings in more turtles to help carry
Show More
him. I really loved this book because it's interesting to see how political it really is, which hits an audience of all kinds of age groups. One of the powerful messages the book delivers is how to be considerate and not be greedy. I would recommend it for kids to read it, but I would also like it if these kids were to return to it later on in the years, because then they'd have a different kind of reading of what the book is delivering.
Show Less
LibraryThing member karlilov
Summary: Yertle the Turtle and other stories is a collection of short, rhyming, stories that teach wonderful moral lessons. For instance, the story of Gertrude McFuzz is a tale that teaches the value of liking who you are and being content with what you have. I think this book will teach young
Show More
children incredible lessons without them even realizing it, due to the funny pictures and comedic poetic nature of them.

Personal Reaction: As a huge fan of Dr. Seuss, this has to be one of my favotites. Because the stories are not just silly; there is much to be learned from them. A great read for students from about Pre K-3rd grade.

Classroom Extension: My favorite story was Yertle the Turtle. I would have students cut out various sizes of turtles, color them, and then they would (with the help from the teacher of course) stack them up along a wall, just as it was in the book. And whoever the student of the week/month is, that person would place their turtle, the king turtle, at the top with a crown.
Show Less
LibraryThing member meallen1
This is a Dr. Seuss book, so you cant really go wrong with any of them but I absolutely love Yertle the Turtle, it is really cute and and funny story about a Turtle named Yertle who thinks he is king of everything and in the end it turns out he is just the king of the mud.
LibraryThing member rjmcwhorter1
The illustrations are clever, and the stories are amusing, and they all contain underlying morals that children can benefit from. I would definitely read this to my students.
LibraryThing member sabdelaz
Dr. Seuss is an amazing storyteller and tells us about a main character "Yertle the Turtle", who mans up to his community of turtles only to end up in mud. "Yertle the turtle", tries to do something unimaginable and unique. He basically tries to climb to the moon only to be toppled overhead and
Show More
into the mud. Its a good book to pass time for sure since it has two other stories in it too. They are all about animals who have something to say about themselves. I would recommend it to again 2nd and third graders. Also the main message of the first story and the main one. Yertle the Turtle was that one should not aim no high as to works so much only to get nothing at the end. Instead one should try to work step by step moderately achieving their goal.
Show Less
LibraryThing member hipsterkidd
This was one of my favorite Dr. Seuss books growing up. The author wrote it in light of the events of the Holocaust and WWII. It is actually for sale at the Holocaust museum. Dr. Seuss did many books that were secretly propaganda for kids that taught them how to be better than what was going on in
Show More
Germany with war and persecution of jews. This book can most definitely be used in a Juior High and High School setting to talk about history, but in an Elementary setting it would be best to just talk about bullying and authoritarianism. Dr. Seuss is also of course notorious for his rhyming free verse form of poetry which could also be used in an English/Language arts class in elementary grades. My student loved this book because of the silliness, but she also enjoyed the lesson it had to offer.
Show Less
LibraryThing member ravjohns
I havent much to say about this book, I might consider using it as a tool to help with a social studies lesson - depending the grade level
LibraryThing member AmberTheHuman
While I was aware of this story and the others in the book as a child, I didn't read this one very often since I didn't own it. I actually asked my fiance to read this to me before bed - and then of course promptly fell asleep, but it was nice nonetheless. I re-read it the next day.
LibraryThing member YvetteKolstad
I recently read that this one has appeared (as have six other of Geisel’s books) on banned books lists throughout the United States and Canada. This story ends with, “And the turtles, of course…all the turtles are free. As turtles and, maybe, all creatures should be.” What a great line and
Show More
a wonderful message this is. Though this is one of Seuss’s shortest and most popular stories, his messages of authoritarianism and empowerment ring clear. Dr. Seuss admitted that his source for this story was the rise of Hitler (just like Yertle rose above the rest by stacking more and more turtles underneath him to gain more power).
Show Less
LibraryThing member kholec1
“Yertle the Turtle” discusses how terrible it is to be a greedy person. Yertle wanted to control more and more things and was never satisfied with what he already had. Yertle’s greed created frustration among all the other turtles. The story shows children that nobody likes to be around
Show More
someone who is greedy, because they are never happy. The book also teaches students the importance of freedom. The last line of the book states, “And the turtles, of course… all the turtles are free as turtles and, maybe, all creatures should be.” This powerful statement displays the importance that everyone deserves freedom. Yertle had forced all the turtles to obey his commands and made them act as his throne even though they were hungry and sore. He did not care about their well-being. This shows students how lucky Americans are because we have our freedom and are not ruled by someone else.
Show Less

Similar in this library

Call number

JP E SEU

Barcode

5898
Page: 0.692 seconds