If I Ran the Zoo



If I Ran the Zoo is a movie based on a children's book written by Dr. Seuss in 1950. The book is written in anapestic tetrameter, Seuss's usual verse type[citation needed], and illustrated in Seuss's trademark pen and ink style. The book is likely a tribute to a child's imagination[citation needed], because it ends with a reminder that all of the extraordinary creatures exist only in McGrew's head. If I Ran the Zoo is often credited with the first printed modern English use of the word "nerd," in the sentence "And then, just to show them, I'll sail to Ka-Troo/And Bring Back an It-Kutch, a Preep, and a Proo,/A Nerkle, a Nerd, and a Seersucker too!" In the book, Gerald McGrew is a kid who, when visiting a zoo, finds that the exotic animals are "not good enough". He says that if he ran the zoo, he would let all of the current animals free for a zoo transfer and find new, more bizarre and exotic ones.

Throughout the book he lists these creatures, starting with a pride of lions with ten feet and escalating to more imaginative (and inearly-maginary) creatures, such as the Fizza-ma-Wizza-ma-Dill, "the world's biggest bird from the island of Gwark, who eats only pine trees, and spits out the bark." The story also grows wilder as McGrew imagines going to increasingly remote and exotic habitats and capturing each fanciful creature, bringing them all back to a zoo now filled with his wild new animals. He also imagines the praise he receives from others, who are amazed at his "new Zoo, McGrew Zoo". Some of the animals featured in "If I Ran the Zoo" will be featured in a remake segment of The Hoober-Bloob Highway, a remake of a 1975 CBS TV Special [that will also have a few birds from Scambled eggs super like the twiddler owls and Kweet]. In this segment, some Hoober-Bloob babies don't have to be human if they don't choose to be, so Mr. Hoober-Bloob shows them a variety of different animals, including ones from "If I Ran The Zoo" and other books, such as the Fizza-ma-wizza-ma-dill, Obsks, Bippo-No-Bungus, Goo-goose, Glotz, Klotz, Hooey the parrot, the dinosaur from the cat's quizzler, owls from I Can read with my eyes shut, a Tizzle-Topped Tufted Mazurka, Russian Polanski, Gussets, Gherkins, Gaskets, Gooch, Twerls, the helicopter bug, the Chuggs, the weird chickens that roost atop each other, and an Elephant-Cat, along with birds from "Scrambled egg super" like the Dawf, the frightful bombastic Agast, twiddler owls, the Kweet and even creatures like the Zizzer-Zazzer-Zuzz from DR. Seuss' ABC.