What Pet Should I Get?

This early Dr. Seuss work, which was found after his death in 1991 and re-discovered in 2013, stars the brother and sister from One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish. An extensive, informative afterword from the publisher says that Seuss often recycled story elements, and this book may have led to One Fish. Here, the narrator and his sister, Kay, have a real-world problem. They're at a pet store, and their father says they can take home only one animal: "The cat?/ Or the dog?/ The kitten?/ The pup?/ Oh, boy!/ It is something/ to make a mind up." Their imaginations soon wander in typical Seussian directions: "If we had a big tent,/ then we would be able/ to take home a yent!" (A spread shows the siblings gazing fondly out of the window at a giant, tiger-striped creature crouched under a canopy of cloth and cables.) Seuss's drawings offer plenty of offbeat surrealism (four exasperated beasts bear banners that read Make Up Your Mind), but the book also takes a sympathetic view of childhood indecision%E2%80%94with an appropriately indecisive ending. Ages 3%E2%80%937. (July)