Note to Seuss: please time your rhyme so it sounds fine

I imagine that my habit of editing children's books on the fly as I read them aloud to my kids is not all that unusual. Plenty of parents probably substitute or omit words to make the content of the tales they tell their children appropriate, or at least a little more palatable. But how many of us do you think there are who re-word things to make the rhymes more melodic or to make sure that the cadence comes out right?

Dr. Seuss may have made a mint, but sometimes it literally hurts me to read some of his stuff out loud (if a good percentage of your words are going to be made up anyway, the least you could do is to get the syllable count right). Ditto hundreds of other children's authors whose words -- poetry or prose -- simply do not flow correctly. Sometimes, I don't even realize that I'm "fixing" their sentences until after the words have left my mouth. I'm generally pretty liberal about the ideas and concepts I'll read about with my children. But I draw the line at bad writing, and there is an astounding amount of bad children's literature out there.

Am I a terrible snob? Or do other people notice this stuff, too?