Children celebrate Dr. Seuss’ birthday with party in Peters Township
Harry Funk/The Almanac
Addy Foley colors her Dr. Seuss artwork during the program at the Peters Township Community Recreation Center.
Josh Werner wears his homemade glasses while reading "I Can Read With My Eyes Shut!" to the program participants.
Harry Funk/The Almanac
Young Beau Trueblood reaches for a marker, while Michael Trueblood is ready to offer assistance is needed.
Harry Funk/The Almanac
Maddie Simonian colors her Dr. Seuss artwork.
Harry Funk/The Almanac
Brooke Hankin wears her “I Can Read With My Eyes Shut!”-type spectacles while listening to Josh Werner read the book.
Milo Miller helps celebrate the birthday of Theodor Seuss Geisel.
Herny Grimm colors his "Cat In the Hat" artwork.
For those who like trivia, here’s a question to try.
Theodor Seuss Geisel’s birthday was Tuesday. What age would he have been?
Youngsters who gathered at the Peters Township Community Recreation Center for a Dr. Seuss celebration shouted answers ranging from 85 all the way to up 150, which actually qualify as pretty good guesses from 4- and 5-year-olds.
Program leader Josh Werner eventually revealed the actual number.
“He was born in 1904,” the township’s assistant parks and recreation director announced. “Today would be his 117th birthday.”
For another trivia tidbit, Werner told the origin story for one of the most popular of the dozens of children’s books Geisel wrote under his known-by-all pen name.
“Everyone loves ‘Green Eggs and Ham,’ right? It has 50 words in it,” Werner said, with a great many of them repeated quite a few times. “Dr. Seuss bet the publisher that he could write a book with only 50 words, and if he did, the publisher would owe him 50 bucks.”
That turned out to be a sound investment, considering Random House has sold more than 8 million copies of the book since its original 1960 publication.
Tuesday’s birthday party featured an opportunity for participants to color various Dr. Seuss characters, including the protagonist of the 1954 classic “Horton Hears a Who!”
“We’re going to make Horton’s headband,” Werner said as he distributed what effectively served as masks featuring the compassionate elephant that saves an inhabited dust speck from being boiled.
As the youngsters, all of whom were wearing masks of their own and remaining socially distanced, wrapped up their coloring projects, Werner handed out spectacles made from pipe cleaners as a prelude to him reading one of his favorite Dr. Seuss books to the children.
“I Can Read with My Eyes Shut!” features the ultra-popular Cat in the Hat, this time in a much more responsible role than his earlier escapades. By 1978, he’s showing Young Cat, his son, the value of cracking open a book:
The more that you read, the more things you will know.
The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.
Of course, that also could apply to a tablet or smartphone these days. And the overall concept applies to everyone, even those who were born more than a century after Theodor Geisel.