McElligot's Pool

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Published:	1947
Author:	Theodor Geisel
Illustrator:	Theodor Geisel
Characters:	Marco, Farmer
Setting:	McElligot's Pool

McElligot's Pool is Seuss's sixth book, published in 1947, seven years after his previous. It went on to win the Young Reader's Choice Award three years later. Pool features the protagonist of And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street, Marco, and again centers on the same themes of child imagination and how it is restricted by the adult world, as he describes the colorful array of fish he could catch in the pool if he only is patient. The text was adapted into one of the songs in Seussical the Musical, "Anything's Possible."

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Marco, to the farmer:

“

Oh the sea is full of a number of fish. If a fellow is patient, he might get his wish. And that's why I think that I'm not such a fool when I sit here and fish in McElligot's Pool.

”

Plot Synopsis[]

Marco has been fishing in McElligot's Pool, tiny pond and town trash receptacle, with no success. When a local farmer tells him he won't catch a fish in fifty years, Marco launches into his imaginings -- that the pool could be connected to underground brooks running under the town and two the sea for miles, perhaps all over the world. He describes the multitude of fictional fish he could catch: thin fish, stout fish, short fish, long drawn-out fish, dogfish, catfish, pinwheel-tail fish, sail-fin fish, young high-jumping friskers, old whisker fish, fish with curly noses, rooster fish, checkerboard belly fish, strawberry jelly fish, seahorses, cow fish, sunburned tropical fish, eskimo fish of Hudson Bay, two-headed twisting eels, grouchy fish, Australian kangaroo fish, long-snouted saw-fish and assistant fish, rough-neck muscular lobsters, flower-liking fish, overarm stroke fish, strange island skiing fish, acrobat school circus fish, parachuting Tibet fish, glurking fish, herds of whales, and a thingamajigger. The protagonist believes that, by catching these fish, he can attain a sense of pride and surprise everyone, including the farmer -- perhaps educating them on the value of a child's sense of trust in fantasy.