[4][5] According to Judith and Neil Morgan, Geisel conceived the core of Mulberry Street in the summer of 1936 aboard the MS Kungsholm, a Swedish American luxury liner, during the return trip from a European vacation with his wife, Helen Palmer.

As the Kungsholm endured a storm and Geisel experienced sea sickness, he jotted down a rambling plot that started with "a stupid horse and wagon".

[6] To keep himself occupied, he began reciting poetry to the rhythm of the ship's engines and soon found himself saying, "And that is a story that no one can beat, and to think that I saw it on Mulberry Street".

[10] According to Geisel, he was walking down Madison Avenue in New York City after learning of the latest rejection, planning to burn the manuscript when he got home, when he ran into Mike McClintock, an old Dartmouth College classmate.

[17] Clifton Fadiman wrote a one-sentence review in The New Yorker, which Geisel could still quote near the end of his life: "They say it's for children, but better get a copy for yourself and marvel at the good Dr. Seuss' impossible pictures and the moral tale of the little boy who exaggerated not wisely but too well".

[18] The New York Times wrote: "Highly original and entertaining, Dr Seuss' picture book partakes of the better qualities of those peculiarly America institutions, the funny papers and the tall tale.

The swing and merriment of the pictures and the natural truthful simplicity of the untruthfulness ... Too many story books for children are condescending, self-conscious inventions—and then some trivial oversight, some small incorrect detail gives the whole show away.

[21] A. O. Scott, in a 2000 article in The New York Times, contradicted this view, calling the book "a hymn to the generative power of fantasy, a celebration of the sheer inventive pleasure of spinning an ordinary event into 'a story that no one can beat'".

[21][23] However, Guy McLain, director of the Springfield Museum, contends that Geisel might have chosen the street mainly because of the sound and rhythm of its name.

[24][25] Charles Cohen notes that, while the book mentions the intersection of Bliss and Mulberry Streets, their real-life counterparts in Springfield do not cross.

[26] Jonathan Cott noted that Mulberry Street is similar to "Der Erlkönig", a German poem by Goethe, "for both of them are about a father and a son and about the exigencies and power of the imagination".

[9] She argues that the horse and wagon at the beginning of the story evokes the peaceful German Americans of Springfield, and by extension the non-threatening actions of Germany.

As Marco's story evolves, the horse and wagon transform into a parade, which Galbraith equates with "a military monolith ... marching down main street as an airplane drops confetti".

Alison Lurie asserts that Marco's factual reply to his father at the end of the story suggests to the book's young readers that "it is sometimes, perhaps always, best to conceal one's inner imaginative life from adults",[28] a message that appears again in The Cat in the Hat.

[28] To Matthew Pierlot, "The father serves as an external check on the boy's tendency to abandon the truth",[29] a Socrates-like figure who insists on intellectual integrity and thwarts Marco's desire to mold mundane reality into something more exciting than it is.

[31] Pastoral theologian Herbert Anderson has written that the child's perspective of reality in Mulberry Street can be challenging and seem subversive to an adult.

[32] The child's untruthful response that he had not seen anything interesting on Mulberry Street is not out of disrespect to the parent, but is Marco's attempt to reconcile his perspective with the authoritative, adult one of his father.

"[36] In bold colors Geisel illustrated the surreal scenery[37] and strange human and animal characters[38] of the book with the strong, loose, energetic line[37][39] that remained familiar in his later works.

[38] Ruth MacDonald saw Geisel's drawing style as fully formed in Mulberry Street, arguing that only his page design improved in later books, better keeping children's attention without confusing them.

[38] Philip Nel found the artwork in Geisel's later books to have a greater energy and looseness than in Mulberry Street or his earlier cartooning.

Nel felt Geisel began loosening up toward his classic style as early as Horton Hatches the Egg (1940) and reached fruition with 1950's If I Ran the Zoo (1950).

[43] After several books in prose, Geisel returned to verse for 1940's Horton Hatches the Egg, using the same "galloping, rollicking, anapestic tetrameter rhyme scheme"[44] he had used for Mulberry Street.

[44] Geisel returned to fictionalized versions of his home town in three later books, which, together with Mulberry Street, form what Donald Pease calls the Springfield Cycle.

[46] John Fogerty, frontman for the Creedence Clearwater Revival, has stated that the band's song "Lookin' Out My Back Door" was partly inspired by the book.

[49] Dr. Seuss Enterprises pulled Mulberry Street from publication in March 2021 along with five other works by Geisel due to the inclusion of imagery they deem "hurtful and wrong".

[50] While Dr. Seuss Enterprises did not specify which illustrations were offensive, the National Post cited an instance where Mulberry Street depicts a "Chinese man".

[52][16] Other plausible (but unspecified by Dr. Seuss Enterprises) content for exclusion include depictions of a "Rajah, with rubies" and two fur-clad figures being pulled by a reindeer.

[53] Other impacts included the collectors' value of Mulberry Street, as cash offerings rose substantially on eBay before the listings were removed for "offensive content".