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Seuss: Changing the Way We Read, a la Shmoop. For someone who is considered mainly a children’s

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author…

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…Dr. Seuss has had a pretty incredible effect on the way we read.

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Of course, we don’t mean that in any bizarro, Seuss-ish sense.

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It’s not like we’re reading upside-down on the ceiling…

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…or in the company of a couple of perilous poozers from Pompelmoose Pass.

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Okay, so it’s not only about the way we read…

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…it’s also about the way we interpret what we’re reading.

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Wait… really?

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Are we saying that Dr. Seuss left as much of an impression on each of us as literary

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giants like… Homer, and Shakespeare?

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We most certainly are. For one thing, we are all introduced to Seuss

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early on.

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Not many people make their way through The Iliad before first familiarizing themselves

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with One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. Before Seuss, the only stuff youngsters read

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were books like Dick and Jane…

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…short, boring exercises in rote memorization…

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…with no semblance of an interesting story…

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…and certainly no instances of actual humor.

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A lunch date with Dick and Jane would have been pretty excruciating.

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They wouldn’t be able to talk about much other than the last time they saw Spot run.

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Seuss’ books taught kids to learn with the use of phonics…

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…the use and repetition of words representing sounds…

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…rather than with memorization.

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Although… we’re sure the Batman comics also did their part.

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Dr. Seuss turned children’s literature on its head…

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…making it genuinely fun and engaging for kids to read.

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And if we discovered in our formative years that reading could actually be a… good time…

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…we were more likely to continue reading into our adulthood.

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Or… whatever you’d like to call our… advanced stage of immaturity.

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There was plenty of weighty stuff going on beneath the surface of Dr. Seuss’ rhymes.

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Many of his stories were allegories relating to communism, racism, or environmental awareness…

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…but even if we couldn’t write a 40-page thesis paper about it before we turned seven…

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…there was still a subconscious sense that we were being taken seriously…

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…that we were being treated like grown-ups.

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Pretty cool. Seuss is largely responsible for our love

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of literature…

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…and especially for the notion that a book doesn’t have to be cold and humorless to

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be… important. The next time you pick up a copy of Infinite

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Jest or War and Peace…

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…first of all, we hope you stretched first…

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…and second… remember that you’re probably reading the way you are because of the Doc.

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