Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.
Back in a past life I taught pre-school, Kindergarten and 2nd grade for several years and worked as a children’s librarian doing story times and programming and the like for years as well. Sometimes I really miss it. Today is one of those days.
I know there’s a lot of controversy behind the man known as Dr. Seuss. Some of his political leanings have come to light and been questioned relatively recently and I can’t say I condone everything he believed or stood for. But you can’t deny that the man was a genius who revolutionized the children’s book world. There would be no Elephant and Piggie or other modern-day classics if there hadn’t first been Green Eggs and Ham or The Cat in the Hat.
He wrote countless books under several pseudonyms ranging from those beginning reader classics to lengthier volumes such as Horton Hears a Who and And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street. His grumpy Grinch is as familiar as Ebeneezer Scrooge around the holidays and is probably my favorite of his characters. But when it’s not Christmas-time my favorite story of his to read is a little-known tale that showed up in a compilation volume with The Sneetches. I found a bite-sized stand-alone copy of it several years ago that I snatched up and read to anyone who will listen. It’s got the power to send me into a fit of giggles like very few things in this world can do. I’m not even going to tell you anything else about it. But I encourage you to hunt down a copy, particularly if you’ve got any littles in your life.
And even if you don’t read this (or any other Dr. Seuss volume on what would have been his 114th birthday) book with your littles, I urge you to carve out a few minutes to read something together and celebrate the joys that reading can bring!