Tribute to Dr. Seuss

It’s Dr. Seuss’s birthday today. I chose him for the Celebrate the Author Challenge because his stories are woven into the texture of our family life in a big way: my daughters choose his books from the library; they listen to Seuss audiobooks; they invent Seussian improvisations as part of their play. What’s so appealing about Dr. Seuss? Here are the five things that come first to mind:

1. The smallest actions can produce the biggest results. Small is beautiful; small matters. In short, you matter. The smallest Who of all turns the tide in Horton Hears a Who, adding his tiny bit to the cacophony of a Whoville desperate to escape being boiled in hot beezlenut oil. The bright moment of hope at the end of The Lorax comes when the Onceler tosses out a truffula seed and tells his young audience, “You might be the one to restore Paradise.” Mack the insignificant turtle upsets the despotic Yertle’s empire. Young Cindy Lou Who (who is no more than two) puts a human face on the Grinch’s enemies, and begins his awakening. It’s the actions performed by the least of us that redistribute the forces of the universe. So stay in the game, and do your small part.
2. Genuineness matters. It’s the whole theme of How the Grinch Stole Christmas. The Grinch has no argument with Christmas, but with the loss of Christmas when it degenerates into crass materialism and greed. His salvation comes when he realizes the Whos in Whoville are the real thing. In Bartholomew and the Oobleck, the horrible green stuff dissipates only when the king delivers a genuine apology. Horton’s true blue faithfulness produces a whole new species in Horton Hatches the Egg. And my favorite treatment of the subject of genuineness, a new discovery for me, is Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are? It’s a satire on the logic of, “Eat your vegetables because there are people starving somewhere in the world.” In this story that reasoning is expounded to the enth degree of absurdity, until it becomes, “You ought to be thankful a whole heaping lot for the people and places you’re lucky you’re NOT!” It ends up looking more like a mixture of self-righteousness and cruelty than true compassion.
3. Dreams matter. So many child dreamers emerge from the pages: the narrator of McElligott’s Pool; young Morris McGurk, with his grand vision for the vacant lot behind Sneelock’s store in If I Ran the Circus; Gerald McGrew, the amazing, entrepreneurial boy who imagines life as a zookeeper in If I Ran the Zoo. Keep that imagination oiled and purring, because it’s a valuable asset to rich living for children of all ages.
4. There’s good in this world, but Seuss stories contain their share of evil as well. Yertle the Turtle is a megalomaniac, as is the Onceler driven by greed and a conquesting attitude in The Lorax. Horton’s mistreatment at the hands of the Wickersham brothers, the nasty kangaroo, and the bird who drops the Whos into oblivion shows some unequivocal badness at work. Maisie, the mother who abandons her egg, confirms that even a mother can be terribly selfish. In a strange way, the Grinch, who looks so ugly and mean-spirited, is really a subversive hero because he fights greed and a mercantile spirit. So don’t be afraid to look past appearances and discern what’s in people’s hearts. There’s good and evil, and it’s going to be a battle.
5. Last but not least: the sheer joy of language. Words! More words! New words! Meanings turned inside out, endings appended and altered, fantasy language that ends up suggesting fantasy creatures and meanings. What on earth is a thromdimbulator? What’s a hippo-no-hungus or a dippo-no-dungus? It’s fun to hear, fun to read, fun to learn to read with these tales. My daughters listen to this audiobook, in which the likes of Kelsey Grammar, John Cleese, Dustin Hoffman, Walter Matthau, Billy Crystal, and John Lithgow read classic Seuss stories with their impeccable timing and inflection. It’s great fun, and highly recommended. I’ve come to appreciate the linguistic adventure of reading Dr. Seuss even more, and so have my (already quite verbal) children.

There’s plenty more that could be said, but these are the first five things that came to mind to celebrate about Dr. Seuss. It’s not as spectacular as what the Birthday Bird could serve up in Happy Birthday to You! But if genuineness matters, then perhaps my gratitude for the gift of his books counts as much as JoJo Who’s tiny voice.