“Did you ever have the feeling there’s a wasket in your basket?”
“A Zizzer-Zazzer-Zuzz, as you can plainly see!”
“and with a thin Blinn shinbone pin, Blinn pins Dinn’s shinbones right back in.”
One of the most absurd children’s authors of all time, his silliness is perhaps what we love most about Dr. Seuss. His stories transport me back to the elementary school library where I always gravitated toward the Seuss section. Decades later, I find myself once again enjoying the perplexing stories as I recite them to my daughter.
Today, on Theodore Seuss Geisel’s birthday, a man better known as Dr. Seuss, (as well as Theo LeSieg and Rosetta Stone), we celebrate the creativity and wackiness of Dr. Seuss with Read Across America, a nationwide movement to instill a love of reading in children everywhere. After all … “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.”
Like the one above, his sing-songy rhymes aren’t always unintelligible though. Dr. Seuss’ books are filled with many inspiring concepts that, however simple in nature, have touched generations of children’s hearts and will continue to do so for many to come. And although he would be the first to tell you that he never started his stories with a moral in mind, many of them were written to address cultural and political issues, including a criticism of the materialism of Christmas with How the Grinch Stole Christmas and The Sneetches’ message of racial equality.
When you read lines such as “A person’s a person no matter how small” and “Why fit in when you were born to stand out?” it’s not hard to understand how Seuss’ 60 books appeared on many bestseller lists, sold over 222 million copies and have been translated into more than 15 languages. An ability to make each of us feel important and unique is what was truly special about Dr. Seuss.
Perhaps the world would be a better place if everyone viewed it through “Rosetta” colored glasses.
“Today you are you!
That is truer than true!
There is no one alive…..who is you-er than you!
Shout loud, “I am lucky
to be what I am!
Thank goodness I’m not
just a clam or a ham
Or a dusty old jar of
sour gooseberry jam!
I am what I am! That’s a
great thing to be!
If I say so myself,
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!”
Happy birthday, Dr. Seuss.
I love that quote!
He was such an inspiring writer!