PARSIPPANY — Intervale School, along with many other schools in United States, celebrated Read Across America by celebrating Dr. Seuss birthday on Tuesday, February 28. Dr. Seuss was born Theodor Seuss Geisel on March 2, 1904.
NEA’s Read Across America is an annual reading motivation and awareness program that calls for every child in every community to celebrate reading on March 2, the birthday of beloved children’s author Dr. Seuss.
Readers included Mayor James Barberio, Council Vice President Robert Peluso, Parsippany-Troy Hills Police Officer Brian Conover, Board of Education President Frank Neglia, Board members Judy Mayer, Alison Cogan, Tim Berrios and Alison Cogan. In addition former teachers and parents read to the students.
Geisel published 46 children’s books, often characterized by imaginative characters, rhyme, and frequent use of anapestic meter.
His most-celebrated books include the bestselling Green Eggs and Ham, The Cat in the Hat, The Lorax, One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins, Fox in Socks, The King’s Stilts, Hop on Pop, Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose, Horton Hatches the Egg, Horton Hears a Who!, and How the Grinch Stole Christmas!. His works have spawned numerous adaptations, including 49 television specials, four feature films, a Broadway musical and four television series.
He won the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award in 1958 for Horton Hatches the Egg and again in 1961 for And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street. Geisel also worked as an illustrator for advertising campaigns, most notably for Flit and Standard Oil, and as a political cartoonist for PM, a New York City newspaper. During World War II, he worked in an animation department of the United States Army, where he wrote Design for Death, a film that later won the 1947 Academy Award for Documentary Feature.
He was a perfectionist in his work and would sometimes spend up to a year on a book. It was not uncommon for him to throw out 95% of his material until he settled on a theme for his book. For a writer he was unusual in that he preferred to be paid only after he finished his work rather than in advance.
Geisel’s birthday, March 2, has been adopted as the annual date for National Read Across America Day, an initiative on reading created by the National Education Association.
