On March 2, people all across America will mark the 99th birthday of Theodor Geisel who was born in Springfield, Massachusetts on March 2, 1904.
So who was Theodor Geisel?
Why, he was Dr. Seuss, of course! And the celebration is not so much about Geisel as it is a national celebration of reading. March 2 every year is observed as Read Across America Day.
Geisel’s first book was And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street, and it was rejected by 27 publishers before finally being accepted in 1937. Notable follow-ups were If I Ran the Zoo and Horton Hears a Who. The Dr. Seuss book with the greatest impact, though, was his 1951 pub-lication The Cat in the Hat. It has a vocabulary of only 220 words.
As our country celebrates reading on March 2, and as teachers, tu-tors, parents and grandparents continue every day of the year to read to their children and teach them to read for themselves, I hope we won’t forget the grandest book of all, the Bible. Without it, we are nothing. We would have no concept of the work of God in the world. Christ himself would just be a rumor.
Yes, Dr. Seuss had enormous and positive impact on America’s chil-dren. Even today, though dead since 1991, Dr. Seuss is the best-selling author in the English-speaking world.
But the Bible is and should always should be Number One!
Paul Wood