Posted on 03/04/2008 6:30:39 PM PST by SandRat
FORT HUACHUCA — There is one thing Command Sgt. Maj. Gerry Wykoff is thankful for, and that is Dr. Seuss never wrote an Army Field Manual.
As it is, his children’s books are full of tongue twisters, as the senior noncommissioned officer for the Intelligence Center and Fort Huachuca found out Monday when he read Seuss’ “The Sleep Book,” to fourth-grade students of Janet Josa’s class at General Myer Elementary School.
For many young school students, the Dr. Seuss books are today’s “See Spot Run” that older generations remember from their days in the lower grades of elementary education.
Nationwide, Monday was Read Across America, a time set aside to both honor Theodore Seuss Geisel — yes, Seuss was his real middle name — and reading. Geisel, who also wrote under the pen name of Theo LeSieg, Geisel in reverse, was born on March 2, 1904, and died on Sept. 24, 1991.
A reading event also was held in the Buena High School Library, where older students read to Kinder Step children from Village Meadows Elementary School, who were accompanied by not only teachers but second- and third-graders from the school, who read to the younger children.
High school students from the national Reading is Fundamental Club, the library’s Graphic Novel Association Club and the trigonometry and calculus classes took individual elementary students or small groups of them to read to, some sitting around tables and others on the library floor.
Cathy Milkie, the Kinder Steps teacher, said it is important to entice children to read at an early age.
Prior to Wykoff’s appearance at Myer, fourth-grade student Mikaela Marshall, read Seuss’ “Hop on Pop,” as a warm-up.
Wykoff entered Josa’s class wearing the signature chapeau of the program, the tall red and white “The Cat in the Hat” head covering.
Being a soldier, he tried to make it look something like an Army beret, but he wasn’t too successful. Noting he wears three hats as a soldier, as the command sergeant major of the Intelligence Center, the fort and the Military Intelligence Corps, Wykoff said it wasn’t difficult to add another one as a reader for the day.
As he went through the pages, reading the copy, which held true to Geisel’s styles of anapestic or trochaic tetrameters as well as iambic, the senior NCO occasionally had to quickly study the words before reciting them.
More than once his eyebrows arched as he saw the words on a page waiting to be heard by the students.
As he read, Wykoff would ask a questions based on the verse. “Does everybody brush their teeth at night,” he asked the students.
Of the 19 students in the classroom, every hand went up. Wykoff also asked about snoring, when the story line mentioned it, and again nearly every student claimed to do that.
While Wykoff may be relieved Geisel did not write training manuals full of tongue twisters, the NCO might be surprised to know that during World War II Geisel was an editorial cartoonist, later joining the government in creating propaganda cartoons for the war effort.
Geisel also commanded the animation department of the First Motion Picture Unit of the United States Army Air Forces.
After the war, he went on to win two Oscars, one for best documentary in 1947 and another for best animated short subject in 1950. He also won two Emmy awards, a Peabody and a Pulitzer Prize.
And, many of what became Dr. Seuss characters in his children books saw earlier life in his cartoons and training films during World War II.
Although he and his two wives never had children, it was said of him that his nearly 50 children’s books, most of which he illustrated and some have been made into successful animated films, were his kids.
With “Green Eggs and Ham,” he won a $50 wager when he proved he could write a book with only 50 words.
As best can be determined by the reaction of the Myer students and those from Village Meadows’ Kinder Steps, Geisel’s work, as Dr. Seuss, will be popular for many years to come — after all, there is another full-length animated Dr. Seuss film, “Horton Hears a Who,” coming out March 14 based on his book of the same title.
Herald/Review senior reporter Bill Hess can be reached at 515-4615 or by e-mail at bill.hess@svherald.com. Some information for this story is from Dr. Seuss Enterprise and other online sources.
Command Sgt. Maj. Gerry Wykoff wants to know who is asleep during Monday’s reading of Dr. Seuss’ “The Sleep Book,” in Janet Josa’s fourth-grade class at General Myer Elementary School on Fort Huachuca in celebration of Read Across America. (Ed Honda-Herald/Review)
He did write & illustrate enough war-time cartoons to eventually be made into a book called "Dr. Seuss Goes to War", though.
http://www.amazon.com/Dr-Seuss-Goes-War-Editorial/dp/156584565X
“Big C, little c, what begins with C? A crappy, conniving Clinton! C C C!”
Seuss is my favorite to read to my kids. We bought the series. TWICE. First one came with a carry tote...the 2nd did also, but in addition a cheap plastic set of bookends long since gone, but the books are special around here. My 2nd grader is learning to read with them...
incidentally another good series is: Spirit Press. A series of Biblical stories for children.
Suess was just another liberal fool. He said there was no meaningful difference between the U.S. and the USSR. What an ass****. Of course, beloved by liberals.
I read 'Green Eggs & Ham' to my 15 month old grand daughter the first time on Sunday. She is, too put it mildly, a very active kid but she she will always go for reading a book which until now had been the child proof nuke grad, slobber resistant non destructible variety.
This was her first book to be printed on regular paper. She was fascinated by the pictures in the book. She so reminded me of her mother 30 years ago doing the same thing.
Doc Seuss is fun to read to kids. I don't know why they are, but they work. Anything you can do to get kids to love books is a good thing.
Democrats to Tell Kids: 'Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah.' (February 28, 2008)
Young children learned to know what the words "looked like" as their parents read to them, but not what the words component letters "sounded" like. They were able to easily memorize the words as they were repeated, and parents were convinced that their children could "read". Children were and are told that they can read when they enter school, but when faced with a word that hasn't been memorized, as a pictograph, they are unable to "sound it out". They are then told to figure out what the word is from "context". Guess wrong and they are lost from that point on. These frustrated children, many of whom are now needlessly "drugged", constitute students, mostly boys, who are labeled ADD/ADHD,through no fault of their own, but by a deliberate system that would keep them "dumbed down". The Dick and Jane texts started the "sight and say" plan to dumb down our children and Dr Suess knowingly, or hopefully unknowingly, carried the plan forward.
Children can only "remember" a small number of words by the way they "look" (Chinese characters for example)rather than by the way the letters that form the word "sound" (phonics).
It is difficult to think that kindly,funny,Dr Seuss books are part of the problem and not the solution to our children's ability to read, but that is the case.
Phonics gives a child the foundation upon which to build.....anything less "dumbs down".....
We know that girls naturally seem to "get" the phonics connection earlier than boys. The number of young boys who have problems that sight and say has created is vast. Many are labled ADD/ADHD as a result. What a shame....
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