Library celebrates Dr. Seuss

Monday was Read Across America Day. Sponsored by the National Education Association, Read Across America is “an annual reading motivation and awareness program that calls for every child in every community to celebrate reading.” The program was first hosted in 1998. Today you will find every place from schools to libraries to community centers hosting local events to celebrate and promote children’s reading on or around March 2, the birthday of beloved children’s author Dr. Seuss. Our local libraries celebrated Read Across America last week with children’s events on Friday and Saturday. Children were entertained with stories, crafts, and a visit from the Cat in the Hat.

The Cat is the Hat is an icon of children’s literature. My earliest memory of the Cat in the Hat is a little image of him on the upper right-hand corner of the cover of my favorite childhood book “Go, Dog. Go!” by P.D. Eastman. Growing up I thought P.D. Eastman was another name for Dr. Seuss. As we all know, Dr. Seuss is actually the pseudonym Theodor Geisel. Phillip Dey Eastman – who wrote under the pen name P.D. Eastman – was a children’s illustrator and author who lived from 1909 to 1986.

Eastman and Geisel served together in World War II, making training films for the army. Several years after the war, Geisel invited Eastman to help him with a series of children’s books for Random House called Beginner Books.

Beginner Books were created in the late 1950s by Random House to fill the need for early reader books. The books were constructed using a list of 379 basic vocabulary words used by early readers plus 20 more slightly harder words. 223 distinct words, of which 54 occur exactly once and 33 twice, for a total of 1,626 words is all it took to create “The Cat in the Hat.”

Go, Dog. Go!, which only used 75 distinct words, was a Random House Beginner Book and as such a little image of the Cat in the Hat was placed in the upper right-hand corner on the cover of the book.

Other Beginner Books by Eastman include “Are You My Mother?” and “Flap Your Wings.” In my opinion, there no better books than the Random House Beginner Books to help children to learn how to read.

Celebrating learning how to read and the ability to read is what Read Across America is all about. Each year for Read Across America the National Education Association selects a different Dr. Seuss book to feature. This year’s book was “Oh, The Places You’ll Go!” This book was selected because books take you places as you read - figuratively and literally.

As you sit and read you discover new lands, new people, and new experiences. You also increase your chances for success. Reading has been shown to improve vocabulary, decreases stress, encourage positive thinking, and strengthen relationships. I encourage you to take the time to read this week in a celebration of Read Across America. I also encourage you to invite those around you to read. The library makes it possible to read in so many different ways. You can borrow a print book, book on CD, digital audio book, or ebook.

The library subscribes to three different eBook services: OverDrive, 3M Cloud Library, and Freading. All three of these services are free to use with your library card, available 24/7, and provide access to new releases, popular authors, and classic literature. The checkout period for eBooks is two weeks and most items can be renewed if you need additional time.

Visit the library’s website to access any of these services or stop by the library and one of our friendly librarians will walk you through the steps.

Reading in whatever format and at any age is to be celebrated. Reading Across America is the opportunity to do that and the library is here to help by providing you with the reading material you want and need.

 

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