The Lorax Lines 1-16 Summary

A Curious Boy

  • The story starts with one curious boy. Doesn't it always?
  • But here's the thing: no words are used to describe this boy. We only see him in illustrations. (Cool, right?) So while we're going to tell the story as if the boy were directly involved, it can be fun for your little ones to pretend that it's them who had a chat with the Once-ler. After all, Dr. Seuss speaks directly to them—to "you"—as the story opens.
  • Ahem, back to business. It's a dark night and the boy walks through his gray, bare, broken-down looking town to The Street of the Lifted Lorax.
  • When he gets to the spot where the Lorax hung out before he was mysteriously "lifted […] away" (10), all kinds of questions pop into his head.
  • Who exactly was this this Lorax character, what was it doing here, and why was it taken away? (If we had a nickel for every time we heard those ones…)
  • These are questions only a man name the Once-ler can answer.