Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss.

By curiousillusion ( March 2, 2010 at 8:02 pm) · Filed under work, activities, books

Today is Dr. Seuss’s birthday. Or rather, it would be if he were still alive – he would be 106 years old. I never really make a big deal out of it but for some reason this year I have. For the past week, my students and I have been reading as many Dr. Seuss books as we can get our hands on, to see how many we can read. And suddenly, I have a lot to say about Dr. Seuss.

I’ll admit it, I never was a big fan of Dr. Seuss before. Sometimes the creatures he created were a bit creepy to me, and I remember not liking the way they looked. But he’s starting to grow on me. A lot. I mean, I always enjoyed How The Grinch Stole Christmas. But I’ve come to appreciate so many more of his other books.

For my college gradution, I got the book Oh, the Places You’ll Go from a friend. Didn’t everyone get that book for graduation? Anyway, I think that was my first Dr Seuss book, which is pretty remarkable because most of my students, at the age of six, pretty much own the entire collection already, while I got my first Dr. Seuss at 22. I read it once, put it on the bookshelf, and never really looked at it again - it is currently in my storage unit.

A few years ago I fell in love with The Lorax, “I speak for the trees!” and the passionate message the little character by the same name stood for. “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.” My students, year after year, never understand the message because they’re too little, even though I try to explain it. They’re just concerned about why you can never see the once-ler. Today I realized how utterly depressing the book is. I read it to the class and afterwards I kinda did a sad sigh.

Last year I discovered Horton Hears a Who! and, well, how can your heart not be warmed by a Dumbo-looking elephant and the theme that “a person’s a person, no matter how small”?! My students aren’t really as impressed with the movie (the old school cartoon version) as I am, which I think rather sweet.

Then this year I fell in love with Mr. Brown Can Moo! Can You? And promptly fell out of love with it, after hearing it multiple times a day since I decided to have my kids memorize it for a performance on Thursday. But it was fun to read to the class, since they have all the sounds memorized.

And then today, in honor of his birthday, I read his book Happy Birthday To You!, which I only received this year and had never read before. And I fell in love with this:

Come on! Open your mouth and sound off at the sky!

Shout loud at the top of your voice, “I AM I!

ME!

I am I!

And I may not know why

But I know that I like it.

Three cheers! I AM I!”

That Dr. Seuss, he’s a wise one. Full of encouraging words and “be happy, silly, have an imagination” thoughts. I love that. As a teacher, that’s what I want to instill in my students… and I hope to be able to instill that in my future children too.

So yes, I’ll admit it, I’m a recent Dr. Seuss convert. I’ve started collecting his books and, well, there are a lot of them (he wrote 44, and there are others published under his name) so it may take me my entire teaching career to collect them all.. especially considering how expensive they are. I currently only have eleven of his books, but somehow I have doubles and even triples of some of them. Which is fine, my students enjoy reading it… although I will say that while his books are considered “easy reader, beginner books” some are hard and long!

Then again, his books give us an excuse to eat this:

That’s right… green eggs and ham. (Oh and m&ms, because they were green too. No I didn’t try any, but the kids said it was good. Well, for the most part anyways.)

“Today is gone. Today was fun. Tomorrow is another one. Every day, from here to there, funny things are everywhere.” -One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish

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