The book is about a warmhearted schoolgirl named Mayzie McGrew who one day suddenly sprouts a bright white daisy from her head. It causes alarm in her classroom, family, and town, until an agent makes her a celebrity. Mayzie becomes overwhelmed and distraught over the situation and runs away.

It concerns the titular character, Marvin K. Mooney (an anthropomorphic dog-person) who is being told that it is time to go by unseen individual, possibly his father. Exactly where he is to go is never specified, though it maybe to bed, given that he is wearing a pajama jumpsuit.

First published by Vanguard Press in 1937, the story follows a boy named Marco, who describes a parade of imaginary people and vehicles traveling along a road, Mulberry Street, in an elaborate fantasy story he dreams up to tell his father at the end of his walk.

‘If i ran the circus” is a children’s book by Dr. Seuss, published in 1956 by Random House.
Like The Cat in the Hat, or the more political Yertle the Turtle, If I Ran the Circus develops a theme of cumulative fantasy leading to excess. The overt social commentary found in the Sneetches and the Zax demonstrates that Dr. Seuss was fascinated by the errors and excesses to which humans are prone,and If I Ran the Circus also examines this interest, though more subtly and comically, given its earlier genesis.