words in scarlet ink

Yesterday was Dr. Seuss’s birthday, and I feel that I should note it.

The first book I read on my own, at the ripe old age of 4, was Marvin K. Mooney Will You Please Go Now!. I must have read it, say, a million times. I read it to my mom when I was sure I could do it. Then I read it to my dad when he got home from work. Then I read it to my sister, who was too young to read or even really understand it at all. She was also too young to escape my reading to her, which my parents gladly took advantage of when they got sick of Marvin.

They were so happy I could read though. Before, I had my parents read those books to me. I think my dad still knows all the words to Old Hat, New Hat by heart, and my mom can still do all the voices she used to do for Are You My Mother?. They read those stories to me hundreds of times. They weren’t all by Dr. Seuss, but all of them were contributed by children’s authors who published at Random House under the umbrella of Beginner Books. Beginner Books was founded by Dr. Seuss, his wife, and Phyllis Cerf.

Even now, I enjoy going back through my Dr. Seuss books when I need a dose of childhood. At Christmas I still visit the Grinch in Whoville. I won’t be going to see the movie, but for the first time in years yesterday I opened The Lorax. My all time favorite Dr. Seuss book, The Sleep Book, is still proudly displayed on a shelf in my room and I read through it every so often before bed when I don’t want to do serious reading or a crossword puzzle to make me drowsy.

But throughout my early years, I read his stories frequently, especially after I could read on my own. I didn’t realize I was reading about racists (The Sneetches), or Hitler (Yertle the Turtle), environmentalism and anti-consumerism (The Lorax) or anything else in this picture:

I suppose I was, and those messages seem quite obvious now, but I didn’t notice them so much when I was young.  Not judging people by the color of their skin and growing up to love trees might be a credit to Dr. Seuss, though.

But that stuff is all retrospective. At the time, I had no idea what a racist was, or what a Hitler was. I just liked the books. Yertle the Turtle, especially, amused me endlessly. It really speaks values about my sense of justice and fair play that, even as a kid, I was filled with glee when Yertle became king of the mud. The words in those stories, written mostly in anapestic tetrameter, captivated me as would future words of future stories in future books, but some of the real magic in Dr. Seuss came from the illustrations.

As someone who hasn’t grown up to be an artist or illustrator, I am still floored and awed by the creation of creatures I had never heard of and could never find anywhere else but in my mind’s eye. They helped develop my own imagination.

I used them to bond with my family as well. My family were all brought up on those books…at least everyone under the age of 60. My aunts, uncles, and cousins all read Dr. Seuss’s stories to me while growing up.

When I used to go to my aunts’ huge house in Harrison, 10-15 years before they left for the condo in Somers, I’d go down to the basement and pull out all the books I didn’t have at home and read those. I spent hours and hours curled up on the couch, reading about things like Bartholomew Cubbins’ hats. I have a very specific memory of an evening where everyone was together but sort of doing their own thing, and I was reading about 500 hats. That’s one of several of my early childhood memories of my family – reading with them.

I’m actually missing huge chunks of my childhood. I was literally missing for long periods of time. I must have been. I spent so much time completely engrossed in Dr. Seuss’s works, that while my parents will swear I was sitting in the living rooms of my various relatives, on their various couches, I know that I must have been somewhere else.

I know I was. As a kid, I spent countless hours on Mulberry Street, in Whoville, or with a mischievous cat. 20 years later, and I’m a better person for it. Journeys like that never leave you.

Neither does that cat. He used to visit me quite often when I was young. I don’t see him so much anymore, but sometimes if I glance out the window on a rainy day, I just manage to catch a glimpse of a red and white striped hat zipping out of sight.

Happy birthday, Dr. Seuss, wherever you are.