On Beyond Zebra!

On Beyond Zebra!
Author(s)	Dr. Seuss
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Children's literature
Publisher	Random House
Publication date	1955 (renewed 1983)
Media type	Print (Hardcover and paperback)
OCLC Number	7715159
Preceded by	Horton Hears a Who!
Followed by	If I Ran the Circus

On Beyond Zebra!^[1] is an illustrated children's book by Theodor Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss. This book fits into the genre of literary nonsense. The young narrator, not content with the confines of the ordinary alphabet, invents additional letters beyond Z, with a fantastic creature corresponding to each new letter. The creatures include favorites such as the Floob-Boober-Bab-Boober-Bubs, large buoyant heads which float serenely in the water. These naturally serve as the example for the letter "FLOOB".

Most of his letters look like monograms of their names. In order, these are named YUZZ (Yuzz-a-ma-Tuzz), WUM (Wumbus), UM (Umbus), HUMPF (Humpf-Humpf-a-Dumpfer), FUDDLE (Miss Fuddle-dee-Duddle), GLIKK (Glikker), NUH (Nutches), SNEE (Sneedle), QUAN (Quandary), THNAD (Thnadners), SPAZZ (Spazzim), FLOOB (Floob-Boober-Bab-Boober-Bubs), ZATZ (Zatz-it), JOGG (Jogg-oons), FLUNN (Flunnel), ITCH (Itch-a-pods), YEKK (Yekko), VROO (Vrooms), and HI! (High Gargel-orum). The book ends with an unnamed letter that apparently is a monogram of all 26 letters in the existing Latin alphabet. It is left as an exercise in naming for the reader.

Some of the animals from On Beyond Zebra appear in the 1975 CBS TV Special, The Hoober-Bloob Highway such as a Jogg-oon, a Sneedle, a Zatz-it, and a Wumbus.

These letters are not officially encoded in Unicode, but the independent ConScript Unicode Registry provides an unofficial assignment of code points in the Unicode Private Use Area for them.^[2]

References

1. ^ On Beyond Zebra!. New York: Random House. 1990. ISBN 0-394-80084-2. 
2. ^ "Unofficial Unicode encoding for the Seussian Latin Extensions". http://www.evertype.com/standards/csur/seuss.html.