This is my daughter Silence reading to her young friend Elia over the weekend:

Silence: “Well, I don’t like to brag, but I’m telling you, Liz,
That speaking of cooks, I’m the best that there is!”

Elia: Who’s Liz?

Silence: Liz is his little sister.

Elia: Why does he have a little sister?

Silence: He just does.

Elia: Why’s her name Liz?

Silence: Because it rhymes with “is.”

Elia: Why does it have to rhyme?

I couldn’t help picturing Elia twenty years in the future, as some editorial phenom at Random House:

This seems a rather traditional family, and Liz is a standard English name. Strive for more diversity in the text? Also, rhyme seems somewhat forced. Would a small boy really say, ‘I’m the best that there is’? Consider rewriting without the rhyme…

Dr. Seuss is lucky he didn’t live in the age of Elia.