Going Green With Dr. Seuss and the Lorax

I love Dr. Seuss! Who doesn't, really? Dr. Seuss lovers everywhere will celebrate the birthday of the great word wizard on Wednesday, Mar. 2, which is also celebrated as, "Read Across America Day."

Like most kids, I read Dr. Seuss books repeatedly as a child. Today, as a mom who has come full circle and now enjoys reading those tongue-twisting tales with my own kids, I am thrilled to have found that there are even more Dr. Seuss books than I ever imagined as a kid.

One of my favorites, which I discovered as an adult, is The Lorax. Whether or not you have children, if you have not read The Lorax, get thee to the library and get this book! It tells the tale of what happened to a wondrously colorful land, filled with smiling Swomee-Swans fluttering about, Humming-Fish splashing around in a rippulous pond, and Brown Bar-ba-loots frisking and playing in their Bar-ba-loot suits. And, the trees, lest we forget the magnificent Truffula Trees!

The Lorax opens with a boy at the edge of a desolate town, abandoned by virtually all life forms, except for the Onceler. Gone are the Swomee-Swans, the Brown Bar-ba-loots and all of the wonderfully imaginative creatures that could only exist in a land masterfully created by Dr. Seuss. After paying the required amount, the boy learns first-hand of how this all came to be, at the hands of the now remorseful Onceler himself.

As summarized by my 6-year-old daughter, it goes something like this:

"It's about a Lorax that lives in a stump. A mean guy chopped the trees off and the Lorax got really mad. With the top of the Truffula Trees he made a crazy suit and he just wants to make money so he just chops down the trees. And he wants to make more money so he chops down all of the trees so that he can make his shop bigger. And it had more pollution and the goop from the pollution went into the water so the fish had to leave and find a new home. The monkeys [Brown Bar-ba-loots] who eat the berries on the trees had to leave because there was no food left. Because of the smoke, the birds had to travel somewhere else that didn't have all of the pollution. The message the author is trying to tell you is 'do not pollute!' The story is about ruining other people's places: the fishes, the monkeys not having any food, the geese having a foggy place to fly."

I don't consider myself a hyper-green mom and am not as steeped in holistic living as my friend Jessica, over at Crunchy-Chewy Mama, but there were a few things that I felt I could do to reduce the ecological footprint I was leaving in my early years of motherhood ... a time when little tiny bodies have especially numerous and grand needs.

Before my kids were even able to speak, they were learning about ways they could have a more positive planetary impact. And, in ways, big and small, they were living it. I bought a stash of ice cube trays and prepared and stored homemade baby food. By the time the second and third kids came along, we used cloth diapers that were hung, along with their clothes, on a clothesline in the backyard to dry. I bought and cut soft fabric to use for baby wipes and used natural ingredients to concoct a gentle solution to use with them. As the kids got bigger, they participated in the effort by learning to recycle and compost as soon as they could walk and carry something in their hands at the same time.

While they learned lots about what they could do to help the earth, it was The Lorax that brought the concepts to life for them at a very young age. Through this fanciful and artfully told story, they learned the consequences of not respecting and caring for the environment and of greed and excess. It is a timeless story full of important and relevant messages to which children, and adults, can relate.

So, thank you, Dr. Seuss! And, in honor of your birthday and Read Across America Day, we'll be reading The Lorax again today.

And, for all of the educators out there, here are some ways that you can bring The Lorax to life in your classroom.