Give me a child...

The Jesuits were fond of saying "Give me a child until seven, and I will give you the man."

It don't know if they're right, but I think there was one man who may have believed that:  Theodore Geisel, better known as Dr. Suess.

There is an amazing amount of politics and "life lessons" hidden among the smart rhymes and strange artwork.  Geisel doesn't even try to hide most of it, although if you aren't paying attention it can slip right by you.

The Cat in the Hat is a story about living life to the fullest, as long as you clean up after yourself.  One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish is about all the marvelous things in the world.  Green Eggs and Ham is about trying new things because, you never know, you might like them after all.  (There is also an unfortunate lesson in there about nagging people until they do what you want, but nothing is perfect.)

There are the obviously political books.  Horton Hears a Who is about protecting those society doesn't care about, regardless of the consequences:  "A person's a person, no matter how small." The Sneetches is about how we aren't so different after all, and how we base our sense of superiority on irrelevant things. The Lorax is about environmentalism and industrialism and the necessity for protecting the world.  (This so upset logging interests that they wrote a competing book called The Truax.)

And then there is the Butter Battle Book.  It is a parable about the arms race, written during the Cold War.  Pretty heavy material for for a book to read to pre-schoolers, yet presented in a way that they can understand and digest.  Adults figured this out : there was a reason it was pulled from library book shelves during the Cold War.

Clearly, not all Dr. Seuss is so formative:  I don't think there is any real message to The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins or Fox in Sox.  Nor is Dr. Seuss the only children's writer to produce books with strong moral messages:  The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein immediately comes to mind.*

I read these books to my children.  I strongly suspect that they developed their views of the world based on them. (Except maybe Green Eggs and Ham.  In that case, the wrong message got through, the one about nagging.) I firmly believe this to be a good thing.

I'm not sure if other people's children were so affected.  I wish they were.  And I wish more adults would read and internalize Dr. Seuss's carefully crafted messages.

It would be a better world in the end.  And I think that was what Theodore Geisel may  have been working towards, after all.  At least I hope so.



*Although quite a number of Silverstein's poems are downright subversive towards adults, such as my favorite, "How Not To Have To Dry the Dishes."