Geisel was working on Fox in Socks when he met his future wife Audrey Dimond, and found she was able to repeat the tongue twisters that others could not.

Knox also rejects Fox's rhyme about Luke Luck and his duck licking a lake, then about fleas, cheese trees, and a freezy breeze.

[2] Geisel met Audrey Dimond while he was working on Fox in Socks, and she was the only one of the adults who could read the tongue twisters aloud.

[12] When writing Fox in Socks, Geisel prioritized the sound and structure of the tongue twisters over coherence, resulting in heavy use of nonsensical phrases.

[20] Like many books by Dr. Seuss, Fox in Socks includes joyous feasting, in this case portrayed with the Gooey Gluey Blue Goo being chewed on by the Goo-Goose.

[21] Philosophy professor Sharon Kaye comments on the relationship of the characters Sue and Slow Joe Crow, suggesting they are an example of a friendship of utility as described by Aristotle, as they have little in common but both benefit from sewing one another's clothes.

Literary scholar Philip Nel likened this to the moral of Sam and the Firefly by P. D. Eastman and Geisel's earlier Private Snafu cartoons, which teach that knowledge should not be flaunted or abused.

Under his reasoning, the deconstruction of language present in the book only works for those familiar with more typical linguistic structure, but young children lack the literary experience to be confused by this.

A child will read the tongue twisters more carefully than adults, causing the book to be easier for children in a relative sense.

[15] The Oxford Companion to the English Language (1992) cites fourteen lines of Fox in Socks in its coverage of "compounds in context".

[27] 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.

[28] 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.

[32] 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.