Green Eggs and Ham

This is an interesting article by Matthew Davis, Ph.D. on the Core Knowledge website.   Davis dissects the popular children’s book, Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss from a phonics standpoint.  A strong proponent for phonics instruction (and a salesman for his own phonics program), the author does a detailed analysis of the sound combinations and spelling variations that are used, including sounds spelled several different ways and letters that stand for different sounds in different words. He concludes that even a simple book is startling complex without basic phonics instruction (Davis, n.d., p. 2) .  Without good phonics instruction, he argues, many students “are likely to be staggered by the amount of letter-sound complexity” in the simplest of stories (Davis, n.d, p. 2).

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