Editing Fox in Socks (section)

== Reception and legacy ==
''Fox in Socks'' ranked 31st in a 2001 list of best-selling children's hardcover books in the United States by ''[[Publishers Weekly]]'' and was the 8th best-selling book by Dr. Seuss.{{Sfn|Nel|2004|p=4}} By this time, it had sold over three million copies.{{Sfn|Jones|2020|p=328}} The ''Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (1992) cites fourteen lines of ''Fox in Socks'' in its coverage of "compounds in context".{{Sfn|Morgan|Morgan|1996|pp=291–292}}

''[[Kirkus Reviews]]'' considered ''Fox in Socks'' an "amusing exercise for beginning readers" as it requires focus on each word, but it said that the tongue twisters made little sense when removed from the context of their illustrations.{{Sfn|Kirkus Reviews|1965}} Roderick Nordell wrote for the [[Christian Science Monitor]] that the book is sufficiently enjoyable to read that it encourages children to work with more challenging material.{{Sfn|Nordell|1965|p=2B}} However, [[Donald Barr]] of ''[[Book Week]]'' criticized the book for being charmless and unnecessarily elaborate.{{Sfn|Barr|1965|p=1}}

Journalist [[Jonathan Cott]] listed ''Fox in Socks'' among Dr. Seuss's best examples of books that balance entertainment with educational value.{{Sfn|Cott|1997|p=121}} Children's literature professor [[Francelia Butler]] praised the book as having the best examples of Geisel's nonsense rhymes.{{Sfn|Butler|1989|p=179}} Children's literature professor David Rudd likened the use of words' construction in ''Fox in Socks'' to its contemporaries ''[[The Wonderful O]]'' by [[James Thurber]] and ''[[The Phantom Tollbooth]]'' by [[Norton Juster]]. He described these works as successors of [[Lewis Carroll]] and [[Edward Lear]] in the genre of [[literary nonsense]].{{Sfn|Rudd|2011|pp=214–215}}