If I Ran the Zoo was published by Random House in October 1950 and is Seuss at his most inventively visual: a boy named Gerald McGrew imagines replacing the ordinary animals in the local zoo with fantastical creatures captured from exotic locations around the world. The book is a marathon of invention — each page introduces a new impossible creature (the Natch, the Proo, the Nerkle, the Seersucker), a new impossible location (the Island of Yerka, the Desert of Zind, the Mountains of Tobsk), and a new impossible capture method.
The Book
Gerald McGrew finds the zoo boring: “The animals here are dumb, boring old creatures. / The lion’s too sleepy; the turtle’s too slow.” He imagines firing the zoo’s current management and restocking it entirely with creatures of his own devising. The escalation is characteristic Seuss: each creature is more outlandish than the last, each capture more elaborate, and Gerald’s confidence more grandiose.
The book contains the first known printed use of the word “nerd” — “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!” Whether Seuss invented the word or drew it from existing slang remains debated, but the book’s role in popularizing it is undeniable.
Withdrawal and Controversy
The book was withdrawn from publication by Dr. Seuss Enterprises in March 2021, along with five other titles, due to depictions of non-white characters considered racially stereotypical — particularly illustrations of Asian and African figures rendered in caricatured styles. The withdrawal sparked the same cultural debate as the Mulberry Street withdrawal, and had the same effect on the collecting market: prices for existing copies escalated dramatically.
Collecting If I Ran the Zoo
First edition (Random House, New York, 1950): Pictorial boards with dust jacket. First printing has “$2.50” price on jacket flap.
Market values:
- First edition in jacket, pre-withdrawal: $2,000–$6,000
- First edition in jacket, post-withdrawal: $5,000–$15,000
- Without jacket: $500–$2,000
- Later printings (post-withdrawal): $100–$500
As a withdrawn Seuss title with the “nerd” first-use provenance, this has become one of the most volatile items in children’s book collecting, with prices rising sharply since 2021 and showing no signs of stabilizing.