A boy walking home from school sees something ordinary. Then, in his imagination, that ordinary sight becomes something extraordinary. That simple transformation is at the heart of To Think I Saw It on Mulberry Street, the 1937 picture book that introduced children to the distinctive storytelling world of Dr. Seuss.
The book is officially, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, and it was written and illustrated by Theodor Seuss Geisel. It was Geisel’s first book for children and it comes up with very simple concept: the son has nothing extraordinary to recount to his father about his journey home, so he has to keep elaborating on what he imagines to have seen.
Starting as humble as it is with a horse and carriage, the son’s imagined journey keeps growing into quite the fantastical pageant of bizarre animals, vehicles, trumpeters, soldiers and watchers. This book is more than a fantastical romp through the childhood imagination, the book is also an inquiry into the nature of narration, how one little fact may easily transform into a breathtaking story due to a creative leap.
However, the book has a complex, more recent history: The book has contained images of racial bias that have been the subject of consistent criticism, and last year, Dr. Seuss Enterprises said it would stop publishing and licensing the title together with five other books, following research on “the book side” by specialists in the field of education as well as by experts in general.
The story begins with something completely ordinary
Marco a young boy that gets home from school, his dad asked him to look out for sights to report about on his way home.
The problem is that there are no such things as far as Marco can tell.
That disappointment became the driver of the story.
Instead of accepting that his trip down the road has had absolutely nothing worth telling about. He begins to fantasize. The story that goes beginning from the initial appearance of a horse and wagon to some incredibly detailed fantasy. With every mental modification the event becomes more substantial and exotic and exciting.
The structure of the book is extremely clever as you are able to see the flight of his imagination unfold, one detail sparking another and one idea becoming more exciting, starting with the ordinary vehicle he saw, moving on to even more fantastic creatures and finally resulting in a grandiose and enormous public display. By the time he reaches home, you have gone a long way from the ordinary street that he actually saw.
Open Library perfectly sums up the whole story of Marco, it describes the story briefly as this: ‘The boy imagines having seen extraordinary sights on his way home from school in order to have a spectacular report to present to his father.’.
That slight departure of reality between Marco real sighting and the imaginative one is what this story is all about.
What is To Think I Saw It on Mulberry Street really about?
At first glance it looks like only a humorous children’s story about the imagination of a child. Yet invention itself is what it is about.
Marco is not daydreaming, he want his fantasy to be told as a story.
That is what makes the book very special – and unusual for a picture book for small children. One can observe the construction of a story by being present while reading a story.
The normal is turned into the marvelous through hyperbole.
This is also what gives the book its value as an educational tool regarding the topic of thinking and storytelling and observing together with a child. While the child observe the same scene as Marco, a different thought can be triggered: What can that be instead?
That does not need to be a logical alternative. It is more interesting where the imagination would lead.
Why the illustrations are as important as the words
A key aspect of early Seuss books was the interplay of words and pictures (text-plus-illustration). In “If I Ran the Circus,” the pictures don’t do simply as the words say: they help set up the dimension and drive of Marco’s imagination. As the fantasy takes shape and grows and a parade unfolds, the pictures become ever busier and more dynamic–creating for the reader a sense that the horse and wagon and Marco’s imagination–are gaining momentum.
This growing image build is so critical.
A text-read would have told us the imaginary event was large; this series of pictures lets us see it (at least the initial one) and imagine the full size of the scene;. It is so as he becomes in Google Books descriptions ‘reimagining this simple horse and wagon into much more complex show.’ The book combines the rhythmic text and images that is part of his trademark style and delivers a picture storybook in which art carries story, rather than just embellishing it.
The significance of Mulberry Street
‘Mulberry Street,’ by Paul Smith/Paul Rodriguez/Molly Cox/Jo Relf, is also not so much the name of a place as its other quality–the line dividing the real from the imaginary, the mundane from the wondrous. A real street–like Marco’s Mulberry Street–is a safe bet; you know what it does, and it knows not to surprise you. But within Marco’s imagination–lo, that street can’t hold him or anything else he conjures up!
The juxtaposition is what creates the comic power of the book–how all this wonder and adventure can grow out of a simple trip down the “normal” street (the humor comes from watching it drift, progressively more comically, away from the starting point) that we, too, might have traversed with our attention elsewhere.
The street, then becomes the ultimate imaginative stage, no far-flung expedition necessary, only a new way of looking at an old setting.
Dr. Seuss’s first children’s book
“It has an important place in history simply because it was Dr.
Seuss’s very first children’s book.”
Seussville’s timeline shows that the initial story by the creator (and author, and illustrator) was published in 1937.
It also highlights a striking detail about its acceptance into the literary world.
It also states that publishers rejected it 27 times. That history adds a significant weight to the narrative. After all, we associate his work now. Dr.
Seuss is practically a synonym for children’s books these days.
Back then, his literary career was anything but a certainty.It wasn’t just the start of his literary career; the book also helped inspire some of the later masterpieces for which he became internationally acclaimed, including The Cat in the Hat and How the Grinch Stole Christmas.Thus, it’s our window into the building blocks of Seuss’s style: the rhyme; the exaggerated movement; the ridiculous invention; silly words and made-up animals.
Why the book’s language feels different
These verses, however, are strongly rhythmic; and the rhythm takes the narrative forward, and carries along the listener (almost as Marco is imagined, carrying his imagination forward); but since it isn’t arbitrary imaginings but the language itself that carries along such imaginative leaps then one thing leads into another, leading in turn to further possibilities which lead on, in their turn, towards higher and ever-more-exciting things. Marco will need all the resources of his imagination as this child will be, reading him, waiting and eager to guess what marco will imagine next…; an excellent instance this for us to observe rhythm carrying the narrative forward in all aspects.
The central lesson: imagination can transform ordinary experiences
The most enduring idea in the book is not the parade itself. It is the creative process behind it.
Marco starts with something mundane and asks, in effect, “What if?”
That question changes everything.
For children, this can be an appealing reminder that interesting stories do not always require extraordinary circumstances. A walk down a familiar street can become the beginning of a story. A person waiting at a bus stop can become a character. A dog running across a yard can become the beginning of an adventure.
The creative lesson is therefore broader than the book’s plot.
Observation provides the raw material; imagination changes its possibilities.
That is one reason the story has remained useful as a discussion point for creative writing and children’s literacy.
But the book also has a serious problem
A modern discussion of To Think I Saw It on Mulberry Street cannot responsibly focus only on imagination.
In some of the original illustrations of the book, representations of racial and ethnic groups include stereotype-driven imagery. Some contemporary readers and educators have particular reservations about illustrations of Asian peoples (both East Asian and South Asian, as these examples illustrate in further detail below). Common Sense Media notes the offensive stereotype in both of these images and addresses why these depictions are problematic.
This should in no way be considered a small issue or an aspect that can be ignored simply by noting its “historicity.”
Although the images are embedded within the historical and cultural context in which they were produced, this context cannot mitigate the impact of these stereotypical images. Children’s literature has the power to mediate how children learn about other peoples, and for this reason, their representation within a particular text becomes all the more critical.
This paradox helps to account for why the text is considered and received differently today than many early generations of its readers.
Why publication was discontinued
In March 2021, Dr. Seuss Enterprises announced it would no longer print and license Dr. Seuss books discontinued in 2021, including And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street and five other books. The organization said it evaluated the catalog of works with a review committee of educators and concluded they presented people in “ways that are hurtful and wrong.”
The move altered the book’s standing in current discussions of Dr.
Seuss. I think it is important to differentiate between historical importance and commercial viability for sale today. A work may be historic but contain things that publishers believe they no longer should offer for sale in a free, capitalist economy, today.
Why some readers still study the book
The discontinuation of publication does not erase the book from literary history.
Libraries, collectors, educators, researchers, and scholars may still encounter earlier editions. Bibliographic records document multiple editions dating back to the original 1937 publication.
For literary study, the book can raise useful questions:
How does a children’s author turn an ordinary event into a narrative?
How do illustrations change the meaning of written text?
How does rhythm affect a child’s reading experience?
Where is the boundary between imagination and false reporting?
And how should readers evaluate older children’s literature when its artistic qualities coexist with harmful stereotypes?
Those questions make the book more complicated—and more historically interesting than a simple story summary would suggest.
What parents and teachers can take from it
For adults sharing classic children’s stories with children, the context is key. Imaginative aspects of the book can be addressed without claiming it is untroubling by history. Stereotypical illustrations (found in old edition, for example) can be explained to children as simply inaccurate depictions.
The book can also serve to isolate creative imagination from observational reality.
Marco’s story develops because he made up what he saw. This can provide an interesting classroom exercise:children describe an event they experienced factually and then imagine a non-real version of the event. Children learn the difference between reportage and fiction.
Imagination doesn’t require faking it:
Common misunderstandings about the book
You see, many people read this as a simple story of a son playing a practical joke on his father. They do not seem to get the sense of the book as fun, playful, self-aware construction. I would argue that Marco’s lies only make the whole fun thing happen, in that the story is about imagination.
The growing elaboration of a fabrication is the essence of the plot.
204. But that requires an appreciation of what we may feel now is childishness as part of the book’s artistic agenda rather than as a failure to conform to some standard of mature good taste.
Why Mulberry Street still matters in children’s literature
The book’s importance lies partly in what came after it.
It established an imaginative approach that would become central to Dr. Seuss’s career. The combination of rhyming children’s literature, visual absurdity, exaggeration, movement, and child-centered fantasy became recognizable features of his work.
Google Books identifies it as Dr. Seuss’s first children’s book and describes its central transformation of an ordinary horse and wagon into a spectacular imagined procession.
At the same time, its complicated legacy demonstrates why children’s literature deserves serious examination. Books can be influential, inventive, funny, historically important and still contain material that should be questioned.
That is not a contradiction. It is part of reading literature thoughtfully.
Conclusion: What To Think I Saw It on Mulberry Street ultimately shows
To Think I Saw It on Mulberry Street began with one of the simplest ingredients in storytelling: an ordinary observation. Marco takes what he sees and keeps imagining what it could become until a routine walk turns into an extraordinary spectacle.
That fantastical excursion can also account for how the 1937 book became one of the building blocks in Dr. Seuss’s burgeoning career, his rhythmic narrative style and colorful, eye-popping artistry showing how writers can make the mundane magnificent for kids. But with all that in mind, The Sneetches And Other Stories hasn’t had an entirely smooth trip through history.
The book included stereotypical renderings, a fact that landed it deserved scorn and caused Dr.
Seuss Enterprises to cease publication and licensing this year.
For readers today, the most responsible way to approach To Think I Saw It on Mulberry Street is therefore neither to ignore its problems nor to overlook its literary significance. Its history offers two lessons at once: imagination can turn the ordinary into a story, and older works can be examined critically rather than accepted without question.
8. Frequently Asked Questions
1. What is To Think I Saw It on Mulberry Street about?
The book follows Marco, a boy walking home from school who imagines an increasingly spectacular version of an ordinary sight on Mulberry Street. His fantasy grows from a simple horse and wagon into an elaborate procession.
2. Who wrote To Think I Saw It on Mulberry Street?
The book was written and illustrated by Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss. It was his first published children’s book and appeared in 1937.
3. What is the main theme of Mulberry Street?
Imagination is the central theme. The story shows how an ordinary observation can become an elaborate narrative when a child allows his imagination to expand it.
4. Why is To Think I Saw It on Mulberry Street controversial?
The book contains illustrations depicting racial and ethnic groups through stereotypes. These images have been criticized as harmful and inaccurate.
5. Is To Think I Saw It on Mulberry Street still published?
Dr. Seuss Enterprises announced in 2021 that it would cease publication and licensing of the book.
6. Was Mulberry Street Dr. Seuss’s first book?
Yes. And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, published in 1937, was Dr. Seuss’s first children’s book.
7. What can children learn from the story?
For children, the book has the potential to spark creativity, draw attention to the details within everyday settings, and differentiate between factual reporting of events and imaginary interpretation or retelling. Its historical and cultural issues may offer a space for a age appropriate conversation about stereotypes, representation etc.
