Celebrate Seuss!

Submitted by Heather Stephens, Librarian, McBee Elementary

At McBee Elementary we have had great success coordinating one of our week-long Reading Is Fundamental (RIF) distributions during school hours with an after-school Family Literacy Night and Book Swap. I am fortunate to work with a supportive team of reading coaches and specialists who help plan and implement most of the stations for Family Literacy Night so I can concentrate my efforts on distributing RIF books and organizing and promoting the Book Swap. The Book Swap also takes place after school; it’s the “main event” at Family Literacy Night and a big incentive for attendance. As each class visits the library for RIF, the motivational activity serves as a preview for other fun activities with the same theme planned for Family Literacy Night; the RIF books serve those students who can’t attend Family Literacy Night while also whetting the appetites of those students who do plan to come. We have found that by collaborating and focusing our collective efforts on one week, we are able to amplify the impact of and enthusiasm for each event; the whole campus becomes invested. We have had record turnout at our Family Literacy Night since combining it with RIF and Book Swap, and this year our students turned in more than 2, 800 books to swap! This is a model McBee will continue to follow.

The theme we chose for our fall RIF distribution (and, by extension, for Family Literacy Night) was “Celebrate Seuss.” Just before RIF began I visited my sister, who lives in Springfield, Massachusetts – Dr. Seuss’ boyhood hometown. While I was there, we of course made a point of visiting the Dr. Seuss National Memorial Sculpture Garden (www.catinthehat.org). The Sculpture Garden contains life-size (or larger!) bronzes of some of Seuss’ most well-known characters, including Horton, the Grinch, the Lorax, the Cat in the Hat, Things One and Two, and Yertle the Turtle – all crafted by Seuss’ step-daughter. Even though it was a cold day, there were plenty of families with children enjoying and interacting with the sculptures. We saw many children having their pictures taken on a Seuss-style chair positioned in front of an over-sized bronze book inscribed with the text of Oh, the Places You’ll Go! I enjoyed getting a picture of myself next to a sculpture of a very realistic Dr. Seuss, at work, at his not entirely realistic desk. In addition to those from the sculpture garden, I also took pictures of the nearby intersection of Mulberry and School Streets, the real-life setting for And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, which begins with the line “When I leave home to walk to school…” I loved getting to experience Seuss and his stories in a new way, and I used the pictures I took on my trip to make a presentation to share with my students during RIF the following week. It was a timely opportunity to integrate geography and biography (The Boy on Fairfield Street: How Ted Geisel Grew Up to Become Dr. Seuss details his childhood in Springfield) as well as to test my older students’ knowledge of Seuss trivia. Dr. Seuss said, “The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go,” and I recommend the Dr. Seuss National Memorial Sculpture Garden as a place not to miss.