Queen Creek Police Chief Randy Brice helped celebrate the birthday of Dr. Seuss on March 2 by reading to students at the Benjamin Franklin Charter School - Power Campus.
Brice said he chose to read "The Sneetches" to highlight why we should celebrate the differences among all of us.
The birthday of Dr. Seuss is celebrated on March 2 every year to recognize both the birthday of Theodor Seuss Geisel and the National Education Association to endorse the importance of reading.
Geisel was born on March 2, 1904 in Springfield, Mass. and his grandparents were German immigrants. He grew up around a wealthy extended family during World War I, which helped shape his patriotism. He drew more than 400 political cartoons during World War II for the New York daily newspaper called “PM.” Many of them were politically charged against the dictators Hitler and Mussolini and Japanese Americans were depicted as latent traitors. In them, he also showed his support of President Theodor Roosevelt and critiqued Congress and he wrote films for the U.S. Air Force.
By the 1950s, Geisel wrote children’s books after the war in La Jolla, Calif., under the pen name Dr. Seuss. Some of these were “The Cat in the Hat,” “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” and “Green Eggs and Ham.” He continued to write until his death on Sept. 24, 1991. His legacy lives on as his beloved children’s books continue to sell well and inspire young people to read. In 1997, the National Education Association chose his birthday to celebrate reading. The first Read Across America Day was the next year in 1998.
A lesser-known fact about Dr. Seuss is that he created the word "nerd." The first documented use of the word was in the 1950 book he wrote, titled “If I Ran the Zoo,” about a boy named Gerald McGrew who visits a zoo and ponders what it would be like if he ran it. So In a way, Dr. Seuss is partly responsible for nerd culture.
