Literally Learning To Read in Celebration of Dr. Seuss's Birthday

This post is inspired by the Yahoo! Mother Board's monthly community topic, discussing how we celebrate reading in our families.

Two years ago we celebrated Dr. Seuss's birthday at Marche in Chicago for their annual "Seussville" celebration. It was a family-friendly (yet gourmet) meal and we were amused by the menu items all inspired by his books, or taken from the Dr. Seuss cookbook. The Cat in the Hat was there, and Thing 1 and Thing 2 visited tables and worked the room too while the kids each received goodie bags of Dr. Seuss trinkets and coloring and activity pages. We ate it up, and it's one of my last memories of us living in Chicago. I'm not sure if Marche is still hosting this annual dinner, but we had a wonderful experience celebrating reading and eating as a family at a nice French restaurant.

I've searched for restaurants in NYC that celebrate Dr. Seuss's birthday, but haven't come across any. (Fingers crossed that a local NYC restaurant sees this and makes plans to celebrate it next year - Marche was packed and you needed reservations to get in when we attended.)

I really can't think of a better way to celebrate Dr. Seuss's birthday than by reading his books, so this year we brought out Hop on Pop for the first time in months . . . and Li'l Boo read the entire book himself! The whole thing!! I didn't have to help him sound out a word. We were both beaming as each page we flipped brought him closer to the end of the book all by himself.

I remember when I was pregnant with Baby Boo, my parents sent us books saying how important it was to read to Baby Boo from the get-go. Telling me that he needed to hear as many words as possible and that by reading to him from birth, that we'd expand his vocabulary and language skills and give him the best academic start for his life. (In hindsight, I didn't realize that not every new parent has people explaining this to them.)

So we read. I read to Baby Boo the day we went home from the hospital, eventhough for months it felt like I was just reading aloud to myself. I read The Itsy Bitsy Spider. I read Good Night Moon. c2cDad read the entire collection of Karen Katz and Sandra Boynton books (we made up our own tune for Snuggle Puppy). I read texturized "touch" books, and ones with automated animal sound and squeeky books. We read inexpensive check-out counter books with googly eyes and Baby Einstein books about making faces, and Mommy Loves and Brown Bear, Brown Bear, and some of our still-faves like Smash! Crash!, or Knuffle Bunny or Too Many Toys or If You Give A Mouse A Cookie. We've enjoyed books that are fun to read aloud like Jazz Baby, The Napping House, Bubble Trouble and the Karma Wilson books like Bear Snores On and of course, Dr. Seuss books. We've spent dozens of nights reading beautiful books like Stranger in the Woods and Snow Bear's Surprise and I Love You, Sleepyhead, classics like Puff the Magic Dragon and Make Way for Ducklings and The Snowy Day. I read them with funny accents and voices and sometimes super fast to fit 'em all in before sleep time, or I pause to let him fill in the rest of a line he knows by heart, or to let him act out what I'm reading, as with Kiss Good Night. 

Fast forward through four years and Li'l Boo can read Hop on Pop all by himself, and wants us to read chapter books and Roald Dahl. Wow.

Of course him reading now does put a damper on the way I parent. No longer can I divert him from a cupcake bakery telling him it's closed when he can clearly read the "Open" sign in the window. Maybe it'll affect my wallet too, as he recently sounded out a store sign "S-A-L-E. Sale. Mom, look, they're having a sale!"