Friends and students celebrate Read Across America Day 2023

  • To help celebrate Read Across America Day, Friends of Elgin Community Library member Jeanne Cook reads the Dr. Seuss classic Green Eggs and Ham to Mrs. Ashlyn McCall’s first grade class in Sterling. Students read along and picked out rhyming words. CURTIS AWBREY | SOUTHWEST CHRONICLE
    To help celebrate Read Across America Day, Friends of Elgin Community Library member Jeanne Cook reads the Dr. Seuss classic Green Eggs and Ham to Mrs. Ashlyn McCall’s first grade class in Sterling. Students read along and picked out rhyming words. CURTIS AWBREY | SOUTHWEST CHRONICLE
  • Fletcher first grade students from Ms. Dusty Strange and Mrs. Jamie White’s classes celebrate Read Across America Day as Friends of Elgin Community Library member Debbie Thomason, who also chairs the Dr. Seuss committee, reads “What Pet Should I Get?” Read Across America annually honors the world-renowned children’s author and illustrator Dr. Seuss on his birthday, March 2. DUSTY STRANGE AND JAMIE WHITE
    Fletcher first grade students from Ms. Dusty Strange and Mrs. Jamie White’s classes celebrate Read Across America Day as Friends of Elgin Community Library member Debbie Thomason, who also chairs the Dr. Seuss committee, reads “What Pet Should I Get?” Read Across America annually honors the world-renowned children’s author and illustrator Dr. Seuss on his birthday, March 2. DUSTY STRANGE AND JAMIE WHITE
  • Fletcher first grade students from Ms. Dusty Strange and Mrs. Jamie White’s classes celebrate Read Across America Day as Friends of Elgin Community Library member Debbie Thomason, who also chairs the Dr. Seuss committee, reads “What Pet Should I Get?” Read Across America annually honors the world-renowned children’s author and illustrator Dr. Seuss on his birthday, March 2. DUSTY STRANGE AND JAMIE WHITE
    Fletcher first grade students from Ms. Dusty Strange and Mrs. Jamie White’s classes celebrate Read Across America Day as Friends of Elgin Community Library member Debbie Thomason, who also chairs the Dr. Seuss committee, reads “What Pet Should I Get?” Read Across America annually honors the world-renowned children’s author and illustrator Dr. Seuss on his birthday, March 2. DUSTY STRANGE AND JAMIE WHITE
  • Fletcher first grade students from Ms. Dusty Strange and Mrs. Jamie White’s classes celebrate Read Across America Day as Friends of Elgin Community Library member Debbie Thomason, who also chairs the Dr. Seuss committee, reads “What Pet Should I Get?” Read Across America annually honors the world-renowned children’s author and illustrator Dr. Seuss on his birthday, March 2. DUSTY STRANGE AND JAMIE WHITE
    Fletcher first grade students from Ms. Dusty Strange and Mrs. Jamie White’s classes celebrate Read Across America Day as Friends of Elgin Community Library member Debbie Thomason, who also chairs the Dr. Seuss committee, reads “What Pet Should I Get?” Read Across America annually honors the world-renowned children’s author and illustrator Dr. Seuss on his birthday, March 2. DUSTY STRANGE AND JAMIE WHITE
  • Fletcher first grade students from Ms. Dusty Strange and Mrs. Jamie White’s classes celebrate Read Across America Day as Friends of Elgin Community Library member Debbie Thomason, who also chairs the Dr. Seuss committee, reads “What Pet Should I Get?” Read Across America annually honors the world-renowned children’s author and illustrator Dr. Seuss on his birthday, March 2. DUSTY STRANGE AND JAMIE WHITE
    Fletcher first grade students from Ms. Dusty Strange and Mrs. Jamie White’s classes celebrate Read Across America Day as Friends of Elgin Community Library member Debbie Thomason, who also chairs the Dr. Seuss committee, reads “What Pet Should I Get?” Read Across America annually honors the world-renowned children’s author and illustrator Dr. Seuss on his birthday, March 2. DUSTY STRANGE AND JAMIE WHITE
  • Fletcher first grade students from Ms. Dusty Strange and Mrs. Jamie White’s classes celebrate Read Across America Day as Friends of Elgin Community Library member Debbie Thomason, who also chairs the Dr. Seuss committee, reads “What Pet Should I Get?” Read Across America annually honors the world-renowned children’s author and illustrator Dr. Seuss on his birthday, March 2. DUSTY STRANGE AND JAMIE WHITE
    Fletcher first grade students from Ms. Dusty Strange and Mrs. Jamie White’s classes celebrate Read Across America Day as Friends of Elgin Community Library member Debbie Thomason, who also chairs the Dr. Seuss committee, reads “What Pet Should I Get?” Read Across America annually honors the world-renowned children’s author and illustrator Dr. Seuss on his birthday, March 2. DUSTY STRANGE AND JAMIE WHITE

More than 230 books were gifted to students at Elgin, Fletcher and Sterling elementary schools this week.

First graders from each district received books from Friends of the Elgin Community Library as part of Read Across America Day, a program established by the National Education Association in 1998 to encourage literacy and celebrate famed children’s author and illustrator Theodor Seuss Geisel’s birthday, March 2.

Geisel, more famously known as Dr. Seuss, wrote and illustrated more than 60 books during his lifetime. His books have been translated into 20 languages, selling more than 600 million copies worldwide. 

Seuss was twice awarded the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Education’s Lewis Carroll Shelf Award. The honor was presented to authors whose works belonging on the same shelf as Carroll’s literary classics “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking-glass.” Seuss’ first was for “Horton Hatches the Egg” in 1958; the second for “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street” was presented in 1961. 

Other popular Seuss titles include “The Cat in the Hat,” “Green Eggs and Ham,” “The Lorax,” and “One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.” Several of his books have made it to television as well as the silver screen, notedly 2000’s “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” starring Jim Carrey, Jeffrey Tambor and Taylor Momsen. The movie was narrated by Sir Anthony Hopkins.

Seuss’ publishing house, Dr. Seuss Enterprises, received mixed reactions last year when the company removed six titles from publication, one of which was “And to Think I Saw It on Mulberry Street.” In a statement, Seuss Enterprises told The Associated Press, “These books portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong.”

Since approximately 2015, Friends of Elgin Community Library helped students participate by reading one of Seuss’ books, Elgin Community Library Director Leslie Durham estimates. Each child is then presented with a copy of the famed author’s books.

This year, the organization delivered 163 books to Elgin, 45 to Fletcher and 25 to Sterling. Volunteering to read were Friends members Jeanne Cook, Debbie Thomason and Beverly Kirkpatrick.