Dr. Seuss, faithful to his mission of writing books for beginning readers entertainingly and effectively delivers the educational goods — in this case, the alphabet. The letters each take a turn in the spotlight and then are wedded to a few well-chosen words that convey the Seuss worldview of the high humor to be found in mental play: “Many mumbling mice are making midnight music in the moonlight … mighty nice.”

In 1950,Dr. Seuss wrote a book from memories when young at the zoo his father managed. “It’s a pretty good zoo,” said young Gerald McGrew, “and the fellow who runs it seems proud of it, too.” But if Gerald ran the zoo, the New Zoo, McGrew Zoo, he’d see to making a change or two: “So I’d open each cage. I’d unlock every pen, let the animals go, and start over again.” And that’s just what Gerald imagines, as he travels the world in this playfully illustrated Dr. Seuss classic book,collecting all sorts of beasts “that you don’t see every day.” From the mountains of Zomba-ma-Tant to the blistering sands of the Desert of Zind, Gerald hunts down every animal imaginable (“I’ll catch ‘em in countries no one can spell, like the country of Motta-fa-Potta-fa-Pell”). Whether it’s a scraggle-foot Mulligatawny or a wild-haired Iota (from “the far western part of south-east North Dakota”), Gerald amazes the world with his new and improved zoo: “This Zoo Keeper, New Keeper’s simply astounding! He travels so far that you think he would drop! When do you suppose this young fellow will stop?”

His next popular book was the famous “Cat in the Hat”.The book itself is considered an impressive feat of skill as Dr.Seuss editor required him to use a list of words no longer than 223 words, but he decided to write the book because he felt there were not enough entertaining stories being used to teach children.

The Cat in the Hat (as well as other Dr Seuss books) can be read in many different ways and thereby create a new reading experience. There are countless ways it could be read just with a change of emphasis on particular words and phrases or a change of pace, tone or pitch.The Cat in the Hat is not only one story,but instead an infinite number of stories.

” I meant what I said, and I said what I meant. An elephant’s faithful one-hundred percent.”~Horton Hatches an Egg

In 1940 Dr. Seuss produced Horton Hatches an Egg. Through this book, Dr. Seuss continuously manipulated language, by creating words where English fell short. These word compounds, onomatopoeic words, and nonsensical words are a credit to Dr. Seuss’s verbal attributes. He claimed that he was drawing upon what he learned in his High School Latin classes and one can also readily see the influence of his studies into Old English while at Oxford. Seuss was an individual engaged in the process of creating his own language.

As America prepared for World War 2, Ted accepted an offer to join the army to make instructional and training films for soldiers. His boss, Frank Capra, and Jack Jones, the animator responsible for such American characters as Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, taught Ted to edit a script and bring film to life by leaving much behind on the editing room floor. His work won awards, including two Academy awards for the film, Hitler Lives in 1946 and a documentary on Japan in 1947. Ted credited both Capra and Jones for teaching him the conciseness which brought so much to his later children’s writing.

McElligot’s Pool is a Seuss classic written after his discharge from the army. It’s a single poetic variation on the theme of adult skepticism that’s no match for childhood faith and daydreaming. A small boy is fishing in the tiny, unpromising McElligot’s Pool, a puddle that (as a passing farmer informs our diminutive hero) is nothing but a hole where people dispose of their junk. But the boy is all optimism: what if the pool is deeper than anyone thinks? What if it connects to an underground stream that flows under the town to the sea? Might not all sorts of fish then swim up the stream and be caught here? “I might catch an eel… (Well, I might. It depends.) A long twisting eel with a lot of strange bends. And, oddly enough, with a head at both ends!” The moral of the story is straightforward: “If I wait long enough, if I’m patient and cool,/ Who knows what I’ll catch in McElligot’s pool?”

“Cause you never can tell/What goes on down below!/This pool might be bigger/Than you or I know! “~ McElligot’s Pool

Dr.Seuss was born on March 2nd 1904, some 108 years ago…but he will live forever in our hearts both young and old…Dr.Seuss left us with this wonderful birthday poem to be enjoyed by everyone on their birthday.

Dr. Seuss and Dr. Einstein
By Chet Raymo Some years ago, when an insect called the thrips — singular and plural — was in the news for defoliating sugar maples in New England. Some species of thrips give birth to live young, some lay eggs, and at least one species of switch-hitting thrips has it both ways. Not even the wildest product of Dr. Seuss’s imagination,the Moth-Watching Sneth, for example, a bird that’s so big it scares people to death, or the Grickily Gractus, a bird that lays eggs on a cactus — is stranger than creatures, such as the thrips, that actually exist. A reader sent me a photograph of a real tropical bird that does indeed lay eggs on a cactus.

What about the Moth-Watching Sneth? Well, the extinct elephant bird of Madagascar stood eight feet tall and weighed a thousand pounds. In its heyday — only a century or so ago — the elephant bird, or Aepyornis, probably scared many a Madagascan half to death.

Pick any Seussian invention, and nature will equal it. In Dr. Seuss’s McElligot’s Pool there’s a fish with a kangaroo pouch. Could there possibly be such a fish in the real world? Not a fish, maybe, but in South America there is an animal called the Yapok — a wonderfully Seussian name — that takes its young for a swim in a waterproof pouch.

Dr. Seuss was a botanist and zoologist of the first rank. Never mind that the flora and fauna he described were imaginary. Any kid headed for a career in science could do no better than to start with the plants and animals that populate the books of the madcap master of biology.

One thrips, two thrips, red thrips, blue thrips. The eggshell of an elephant bird, cut in half, would make a splendid salad bowl. Is it Seuss, or is it reality? You see, the boundary between the so-called “real” world and the world of the imagination begins to blur. And that is just as it should be if a child is to grow up with a proper attitude toward science.

Do black holes, those strange products of the astronomer’s imagination, really exist? What about electrons, invisibly small, fidgeting in their atomic shells? How about the dervish dance of DNA as it unzips down the middle to reproduce itself? No one has ever seen these things, at least not directly. Like the Gractus and the Sneth, they are wonderful inventions of the imagination.

Most science books are packed full of useful information. What most of these books do not convey is the extraordinary adventure story of how the information was obtained, why we understand it to be true, or how it might embellish the landscape of the mind. For many children — and adults, too — science is information, a mass of facts. But facts are not science any more than a table is carpentry. Science is an attitude toward the world — curious, skeptical, undogmatic, forward-looking. To be a scientist, or simply to share the scientific attitude, one must be like the kid in Dr. Seuss’s On Beyond Zebra who refused to be limited by the fact of the alphabet: “In the places I go there are things that I see / That I never could spell if I stopped with the Z.”

Curiosity, voracious seeing, sensitivity to rules and variations within the rules, and fantasy. These are habits of mind crucial for science that are best learned during childhood.

Albert Einstein wrote: “The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science.” At first, this might seem a strange thought as it applies to science. We are frequently asked to believe that science takes mystery out of the world. Nothing could be further from the truth. Mystery invites curiosity. Unless we perceive the world as mysterious, we shall never be curious about what makes the world tick.

” A person’s a person no matter how small.”

Surely among the most lovable of all Dr. Seuss creations, Horton the Elephant represents kindness, trustworthiness, and perseverance–all wrapped up, thank goodness, in a comical and even absurd package.

Horton hears a cry for help from a speck of dust, and spends much of the story trying to protect the infinitesimal creatures who live on it from the derision and trickery of other animals, who think their elephant friend has gone quite nutty.

But worse is in store: an eagle carries away the clover in which Horton has placed the life-bearing speck, and “let that small clover drop somewhere inside of a great patch of clovers a hundred miles wide!”

Horton wins in the end, after persuading the “Who’s” to make as much noise as possible and prove their existence.

“I meant what I said, and I said what I meant. An elephant’s faithful one hundred percent.”