Students across the North Olympic Peninsula joined others across the country in reading and being read to on Friday, with a heavy emphasis on the books of the late Dr. Seuss.
It was the 10th anniversary of the National Education Association’s Read Across America Day, an annual celebration of the birthday of the writer and illustrator of such books as Green Eggs and Ham and The Cat in the Hat.
Theodor Seuss Geisel, who wrote under the name Dr. Seuss, penned 48 books.
He was born on March 2, 1904, and died near San Diego in 1991.
Students in the Port Angeles School District listened to volunteer readers, such as Mary Hebert, assistant superintendent, who read Oh, the Places You Will Go to Barry Burnett’s fourth grade class at Franklin Elementary School.
At Grant Street School in the Port Townsend School District, activities varied widely, said Principal Steve Finch.
Several classes conducted read-ins, in which students and teachers came to school in their pajamas and spent most of their school day reading.
Other classes met in pairs for reading aloud or reading with partners.
Linda Morris’s second grade classroom invited four community authors to share their books and their ideas on writing.
In Sequim, some 250 teenagers poured out of Sequim High School at 8:15 a.m., walked up Fir Street to Helen Haller Elementary and hunkered down to read with about 600 children.
It was the first large-scale mixing of Sequim High School and Helen Haller students, said Jennifer Van De Wege, the Sequim High leadership teacher who initiated it.
After their departure, first-grade teacher Ione Marcy told her class, “While you’re at recess, I’m going to make green eggs and ham for you.”
The first-graders squirmed and smiled, and then unrolled their blankets for some more reading.
Marcy has served ham and eggs with green food coloring before.
“As soon as they try it, they like it,” she said, adding that reading Dr. Seuss made all the difference.
“The book is about preconceived notions, and how once you open up your mind, it’s OK.”
For more information about the Read Across America Day, check the NEA Web site at www.nea.org/readacross.
