Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss
Today is Dr. Seuss’s birthday.
I knew that Dr. Seuss had died in 1991, but didn’t know March 2 was his birthday until I read it online today. At the mention of his name, my brain was flooded with whispered rhymes of cats and hats and foxes and sockses and green eggs and ham, Sam I am.
Like most people of my generation and beyond, Dr. Seuss’s poems are woven into the lyric of my childhood, as much a part of me as water.
According to an online bio, Dr. Seuss is largely responsible for kicking off post-industrial-era literacy. In response to a 1954 article in Life magazine that stated kids weren’t learning to read because their books were boring, Seuss wrote The Cat In The Hat:
This book was a tour de force—it retained the drawing style, verse rhythms, and all the imaginative power of Seuss’s earlier works, but because of its simplified vocabulary could be read by beginning readers.
Yeah yeah yeah — we kids know instinctively that Dr. Seuss was a genius.
Seuss’s poems are everything whimsical, quirky, funny and true. His illustrations are a child’s imagination made manifest. He just plain speaks Kid, and thus eternally and to all of us, no matter how much time goes by.
Technorati Tags: Dr. Seuss, children’s books, literacy
Filed under Men We Love, Pop Culture |Leave a Reply