Let's Have a Little Chat About Tweetle Beetles: A Tribute to Dr. Seuss

Today is Dr. Seuss's birthday. He would be 108 if he were still alive. (He died in 1991, in case you were wondering.) I am sure I am not the only one who fell in love with his anapestic tetrameter before I had a clue what meter, rhyme, and poems really were. Many of us grew up enjoying the reading The Cat in the Hat before we could actually read fast enough to twist our tongues with the alliteration. In high school, I fell in love with and memorized the poem about tweetle beetles; one of my many quarks. My favorite graduation book is Oh the Places You'll Go. I love Sueuss's unique illustrations. The wisdom and life lessons behind the sneeches, the North going Zax and the South going Zax, the Grinch are ones I much appreciate.

I suppose my nostalgic connection to Dr. Seuss grew when one summer I was perusing through my great-grandmother's book collection, I found the book You're Only Old Once. I loved the way he could poke humor at aging. (My second-favorite Dr. Seuss poem is the one about all of the pills old people take.) While I was flipping through the book, my great-grandmother told me that my great-grandfather went to school with him.

With that said, my school sent out an e-mail for volunteers to help with a readership program in celebration of Dr. Seuss's birthday. They sent me a biological sketch and instructed me to share a Dr. Seuss book of my choice with the children. I was able to verify that my great-grandfather overlapped with Dr. Seuss by a year at Dartmouth College. Great-grandpa Folger did an instructorship the year that Dr. Seuss started college.

My respect for the genius of Dr. Seuss has grown even more after a short google search about him. He was really a man who cared about children's reading abilities.

At the same time, an important development occurred that influenced much of Seuss' later work. In May 1954, Life magazine published a report on illiteracy among school children, which concluded that children were not learning to read because their books were boring. Accordingly, Seuss' publisher made up a list of 400 words he felt were important and asked Dr. Seuss to cut the list to 250 words and write a book using only those words. Nine months later, Seuss, using 220 of the words given to him, completed 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' earlier works, but because of its simplified vocabulary could be read by beginning readers. A rumor exists,that in 1960, Bennett Cerf bet Dr. Seuss $50 that he couldn't write an entire book using only fifty words. The result was supposedly Green Eggs and Ham. The additional rumor that Cerf never paid Seuss the $50 has never been proven and is most likely untrue. These books achieved significant international success and remain very popular.
(Wikipedia)

Dr. Seuss's family immigrated from Germany. The German pronounciation of Seuss is "zoice". Dr. Seuss has been quoted as saying "Seuss -- rhymes with voice". His other pen names were Theo and LeSieg (Geisel spelled backwards) for books he wrote but others illustrated. (Wikipedia)

With that I will share my second-favorite Dr. Seuss poem. Please feel free to share yours.

This small white pill is what I munch
at breakfast and right after lunch.
I take the pill that's kelly green
before each meal and in between.
These logan berry-colored pills
I take for early morning chills.
I take the pill with zebra stripes
to cure my early evening gripes.
These orange-tinted ones, of course,
I take to cure my charley horse
I take three blues at half past eight
to slow my exhalation rate.
On alternate night at nine p.m.
I swallow pinkies. Four of them.
The reds, which make my eyebrows strong,
I eat like popcorn all day long.
The speckled browns are what I keep
beside my bed to help me sleep.
This long flat one is what I take
If I should die before I wake.

You're Only Old Once! - By Dr. Seuss