I remember the dog eared books clearly. I was in elementary school. I remember the library periods asnot being long enough. I had to tear myself away from the books. The books In question were byTheodor Seuss Celsel better known as Dr. Seuss. All those pictures had a strange hold on me. Icould not get enough of them. When the library period ended, I couldn’t wait for the next one. Twenty five years later, I’m

still reading those books. Only this time it’s for bedtime. For our kids. They started with Dr. Seuss’s ABC. Who could forget the lines…BIG F little f… F. f.. F Four fluffy feathers on a Fiffer-feffer-feff? They started reading that book by associating the pictures with the words. After that book is mastered then you graduate to the other ones.

Dr. Seuss was born March 2,1904. He

wrote his first book in 1936, And to think I saw it on Mulberry Street, which was published in 1937. His writing career was interrupted by the war. In the early 50’s America was realizing that children had trouble reading because the books were boring. Seuss’s publisher wanted him to use 250 words on a list of 400 that the publisher thought were Important for kids to learn. Using 220 of the words, he came up with The Cat in the Hat In 1960, a friend bet him that he couldn’t write a book with only 50 words. He came up with Green Eggs and Ham. His friend never paid. He also painted psychedelic paintings on the side.

Our kids’ dear auntie Lisa gave them a book which is a compilation of five of Dr. Seuss’s stories called A Hatful of Seuss. Bartholomew and the Oobleck… “..Bartholomew looked the king square in the eye. “You may be a mighty king,” he said “But you’re sitting in Oobleck up to your chin. And so is everyone else in your land. And if you won’t even say you’re sorry, you’re no sort of king at all!'”‘

If I ran the zoo… “I’ll go to the far-away mountains of Tobsk. Near the river of Nobsk, and I’ll bring back an Obsk, A sort of kind of a thing-a-ma-Bobsk. Who only eats rhubarb and corn on the cobsk. Then people will flock to my zoo In a mobsk. “McCrew” they will say “does a wonderful jobskl””

Horton Hears a Who… “After all, a person’s a person, no matter how small.”

The Sneetches and other stories… “We’re exactly like you! You can’t tell us apart. We’re all just the same, now, you snooty old smarties! And now we can go to your frankfurter parties.”

The going to bed book…(the one I like to read to them :)… “But I know this clock does does onevery slick trick. It doesn’t tick tock. How it goes is tock tick. So, with ticks in its tocker, tocks in its ticker it saves a lot of time and the sleepers sleep quicker.”

Theodor Seuss Geisel died 24 September 1991. Long live Dr. Seuss.