“Fame! You’ll be famous as famous can be, with the whole wide world watching you win on TV.”

-Oh! The Places You’ll Go by Dr. Seuss

On March 2, 1904, Theodor Seuss Geisel, was born and soon after would be entering schools, homes, libraries, etc through his rhymes and crazy pictures. But he would not be known as Theodor; he would be known worldwide simply as Dr. Seuss.

If the doctor was still alive today, he would have turned 106 years old, but unfortunately he passed away on September 24, 1991.  I can still remember sitting in my elementary school classes and reading his classics like, Green Eggs and Ham or The Cat in the Hat.  So today I filmed a class doing just that. (haha it rhymed)

Even during doctor visits, a Dr. Seuss book was always waiting to be read to me by my mother as we waited for the doctor.  My mom has been a daycare provider for the past 16 years and I can still go home today and hear her reading aloud, The Foot Book, to her daycare children.  The book is  tattered, torn and currently held together with masking tape, but that doesn’t stop her from reading it or hearing the kids finish the last word in the rhyme.

Looking back at it, Dr. Seuss made reading fun for me. It was a time for me to learn how to sound out words when I first started reading and it was a time that always brought my family together for one last bedtime story.  It got to a point where I memorized his books and didn’t even need to look at the pages.

I grew out of Dr. Seuss and started reading text books and novels in high school.  I began to hate reading because I couldn’t find an adventure in my regular books (let alone a rhyme).  But just when I was ready to take on the world of college, I received a gift.  I had opened all my high school graduation gifts; money, towels, money, laundry bags, money, bath caddies, and a book.  A book my aunt and uncle got me called, Oh! The Places You’ll Go! by Dr. Seuss.  You know what I did?  I opened it and right there in the middle of all my gifts in front of my family I read the last book Dr. Seuss wrote.

His words still inspire me today.  That book my aunt and uncle gave me was a way to reassure me that I was going to be ok in college and that I was going to do great things; the world I was going to walk into was mine.  And now, as a senior in college ready to take on an even bigger world, I’m going to read that book again just to reassure myself that everything is going to be ok and that world is still mine. The possibilies are endless.

“Kid, you’ll move mountains!
So…be your name Buxbaum or Bixby or Bray or Mordecai Ale Van Allen O’Shea, you’re off to Great Places!
Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting.
So…get on your way!”

-Dr. Seuss (last line in his last book)