{"id":1141,"date":"2009-03-02T11:38:00","date_gmt":"2009-03-02T19:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2009\/03\/happy-birthday-dr-seuss.html"},"modified":"2009-03-02T11:38:00","modified_gmt":"2009-03-02T19:38:00","slug":"happy-birthday-dr-seuss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2009\/03\/happy-birthday-dr-seuss.html","title":{"rendered":"Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_yrL6yfubw8g\/Saw5J_rjuxI\/AAAAAAAAAIA\/6P57INSE35Y\/s1600-h\/lorax.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_yrL6yfubw8g\/Saw5J_rjuxI\/AAAAAAAAAIA\/6P57INSE35Y\/s320\/lorax.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\"><\/a><br \/>TODAY i&#8217;m wishing a happy 105th to one of the greatest writers this country has known, and one i&#8217;ve come to appreciate more as i&#8217;ve revisited him for the sake of my son. (i only regret that the good doctor did not have the good fortune to be born an aquarius.) <\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>there are many wonderful authors for little kids &#8212; lucy cousins, eric carle, byron barton, ezra jack keats &#8212; but for an adult who loves the sound of language, what an electric jolt it is to get to the point where you can read junior dr. seuss! even a simple, almost monosyllabic book like <\/div>\n<div>&#8220;hop on pop&#8221; is quite ingenious.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>perhaps my favorite of his, and certainly the most poignant of his books, is THE LORAX. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/features\/books\/la-ca-lorax14-2008dec14,0,5975279.story\">here<\/a> is a recent LAT story, not by me, about that book and how is speaks to both the past and present of the green movement.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>part of what has struck me as i&#8217;ve read the book for the second and third time on the same day to my son ian is how stodgy the lorax himself is. that is, here is a book written effectively, in &#8220;the 60s&#8221; (it came out in 1971), with an enviro\/countercultural message, and where the hero is someone who represents not youth but the wisdom of the ages. in fact, the once-ler, the spirit of full-speed-ahead capitalism and innovation, has a younger, more dynamic spirit and actually calls the doomy lorax &#8220;dad&#8221; in a condescending way. we have geisel, an older liberal, looking at his times and coming to an original conclusion about what&#8217;s needed. it also presages the way al gore was often portrayed.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>(a great overlooked book is &#8220;on beyond zebra,&#8221; which posits a kind of psychedelic alphabet that picks up where ours lets off. appealed to my childhood love of codes and hidden things.)<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>but you&#8217;ve surely got your own favorites. either way, happy birthday to the good doctor!!<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Photo credit: Flickr user <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/blamedstarlie\/2232319349\/\">31<\/a> <\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>TODAY i&#8217;m wishing a happy 105th to one of the greatest writers this country has known, and one i&#8217;ve come to appreciate more as i&#8217;ve revisited him for the sake of my son. (i only regret that the good doctor did not have the good fortune to be born an aquarius.) there are many wonderful [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[468,163,69,539,142],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1141","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-green","7":"category-60s","8":"category-70s","9":"category-dr-seuss","10":"category-kid-lit","11":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1141\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}