The book is almost pure silliness, which little kids and big kids love, and which translates seamlessly into the physical comedy that is what captivates us in Go, Dog. So adding music-especially as performed by the stellar professional actors that perform for TYKEs-actually enhances the preschooler's sensory experience of the book. Well, consider what I said about sensory contrasts above. Musicals need plots, don't they, in order to keep the attention? Eastman's story for the stage, rely almost exclusively on the very-spare dialogue from the book. Steven Dietz and Allison Gregory, who adapted P.D. Can a book without a plot really be transformed into an hour-long musical? Go!: Red, green, yellow, and blue dogs going about their business working and playing, going up, down, in, and out, spinning around, driving cars, having parties on boats at night despite the fact that night is a time for sleep, and wondering whether one's aesthetic taste in hats is reciprocated (spoiler will be, but not until the end of the book). That's pretty much it for the substance of Go, Dog. 'They will sleep all night.' ( See, Madison? The doggies sleep all night. Millions of parents have repeated this passage many millions of times, with a kind of wistful firmness, to their 3-year-olds.

People do different things at different times: In the day, we work and play. And contrasts of the senses are how kids learn about the world: Blue looks different from red, hot sun feels different from cool water, you sense the pull of the earth as you go up and down and around and around. Go! actually enhances a kid's experience of what the book is about. So it was a big relief to see that TYKEs' production of Go, Dog. I can think of all kinds of reasons NOT to turn kids' classics into musicals: Primary among them is that they often translate poorly the musical often ends up as a pale shadow of the original work with none of the original charm, and, as such, does the book an injustice. Originally published in 1961, it has been a classic since I was a kid. Go! offers no profound insights for adults, it gives toddlers through kindergartners developmentally-perfect learning and humor. Go!: This is a book that parents enjoy because their kids do.

Somewhere between these two extremes are books like P.D. Other books that kids adore, on the other hand, turn parents' brains to mush by the third reading ( Thomas the Tank Engine was my personal Waterloo). Seuss's The Sneetches or Shel Silverstein's Where the Sidewalk Ends: These timeless picture books have many layers that allow adults to appreciate the work on their terms while kids do so on their own level.

Go dog go book dr seuss