Friday, January 18, 2008 - My reintroduction to Dr. Seuss

Friday, January 18, 2008
My reintroduction to Dr. Seuss
How long has it been since you read a Dr. Seuss book? Well, for you parents it probably has only been a few days or a few hours or perhaps even a few weeks. I can safely say that since the birth of Josh, and even a few months prior, some 7 years ago, I've been reading Dr. Seuss on a somewhat regular basis. This is all fine and dandy except that in my standard arsenal I've only got a few books. One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish, Green Eggs and Ham, Baby oh Baby the Place You'll Go! and the like. These are standard, yes, but I feel as though I've lost valuable years of reading since I purchased a few more over Christmas. I always get Josh books, consistently throughout the year, but I do like to get some for Christmas as well. When I went to shop at Borders this year they had a 3 for 2 sale on Dr. Seuss books. Buy 2 get 1 free basically. So I figured why not pick up a few more that we don't already have. I bought two single title books and then one big 6 story compilation edition. Josh pulled the big book off the shelf the other night and asked if we could read some of it.
Starting at the begining of the book I noticed that I recognized nearly all of the titles inside, yet, I couldn't actually recall what the stories were about or if I'd even read most of them before. I figured this would be good for both of us. This book is not something that your average 6 year old grade level reader can tackle. It has the big stories, the stories so fantastically written and wonderfully worded that there are undoubtedly 6th graders out there who might have trouble breezing through. Starting off with "And To Think That I Saw It On Mullberry Street," moving through "The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins," and last night tackling "Horton Hatches an Egg." This has been quite the adventure in reading the works of Dr. Seuss.
I feel like I missed out on a significant portion of my childhood not having read these wonderful stories before. Sure I had "Hop on Pop," and "The Cat in the Hat," among many others, but these great stories I'd never had the opportunity to read. Nonetheless, I am now quite committed to reading the entire works (if you've met me you probably already know that once I like an author I'm all about reading his/her entire works). I'm really thrilled to sit down each night and read these outloud to Josh. I just hope he appreciates them half as much as I do.