Description: As Dr. Seuss's editor for the last eleven years of his life, Janet Schulman had been aware that he was working on a story about a teacher and that when he got stuck in resolving it, he put it aside to create Oh, the Places You'll Go!, his last book. After his death in 1991, Schulman asked to see the story about the teacher. She loved what she was sent but knew that it would be difficult to find a writer and an illustrator with the right talents and sensibility to take Ted's concept, characters, and few lines of verse and make it into a book that deserved to be published. "I pondered the problem for nearly five years and thought it was impossible -- until I thought of Prelutsky and Smith, both enormous Seuss fans and both enormously talented in their own right. With them I knew I would not get something that was imitation Seuss. The result is truly a union of three unique minds, something that's greater than the sum of its parts", said Schulman.

The book opens with a brief introduction by Janet Schulman explaining how this book came to be and reproduces a number of Ted Geisel's pencil sketches, hand-written verses, and "thinking out loud" notes that were eventually turned over to Jack Prelutsky and Lane Smith to make into a fully realized narrative.

Diffendoofer School, at the corner of Dinkzoober and Dinkzott, looks like any other school, "but we suspect it's not". We meet our narrator's favorite teacher, bouncy Miss Bonkers, the worrywart principal Mr. Lowe, and all the other never-to-be-forgotten characters who make Diffendoofer a one-of-a-kind school. Then one day an ominous announcement is made: all the schools are being tested. If little Diffendoofer school does not do well itwill be torn down and its students will have to go to school in dreary Flobbertown. "Not Flobbertown", we shouted, and we shuddered at the name, for everyone in Flobbertown does everything the same". Miss Bonkers assures them that they will pass the test with flying colors -- "We've taught you that the earth is round, that red and white make pink, and something else that matters more -- we've taught you how to think" And when they do succeed so splendidly Mr. Lowe declares a holiday to be known forever more as Diffendoofer Day. After whooping it up the entire school day long, the celebration ends with a triumphant chorus of the Diffendoofer Song:

"Oh finest school in Dinkerville,

The only one as well,

We love you, Diffendoofer School

Much more than we can tell.

You are so diffendooferus

It gives us joy to say,

Three cheers for Diffendoofer School...

Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!

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