Personal Seuss Story

I was introduced to Seuss at a very young age. It probably started much earlier than I can actually remember, but the defining moment came when I was three and it was around Christmas time. My mom showed me the red and green cover of the book How the Grinch Stole Christmas. I have seen the 30 minute show before and loved it, but now I have the book to reference. After my mom read it to me, I began noticing the plethora of Seuss books we actually owned (which turned out to be a lot, actually). Green Eggs and Ham, The Cat in the Hat, Oh, the Places You Will Go, and many more; I grew up reading those books with my parents. I moved from Seuss to Shel Silverstein around the time I was eight and from there started reading short chapter books like Scooby-Doo and Captain Underpants. I will always remember that I started reading with rhyme and that it started with a green Who who didn’t like Christmas. The books taught me many things about literacy using many tools, such as repetition and theme. All the stories had a neat and unique theme to them. Green Eggs and Ham teaches you to try new things, while The Lorax has a deeper meaning behind it, such as protecting the environment. Not only did Dr, Seuss help my literacy, he also brought up simple life lessons and pseudo-social change.

Seuss Intro

Alright you boys, alright you girls

It’s time to discuss where learning unfurls.

Thinking back, as long as I could remember

Yes even back to my first December

There was one author who stood above the rest

You might even say that he was the best.

From how the books were written

To how they were read

Dr. Seuss Knew how to stick in your head

He used clever plots and clever themes

All nestled away

In neat rhyme schemes. 

Take heed, in fact

For what we will discuss

is why Seuss left a deep impression on us.

With characters here and words he would tinker

Seuss put great joy in making a kid into a thinker.

What sticks with us still is not the words or the book

But the message behind.

There, that’s the hook.

Though the books were for kids

The parents weren’t left out

For with him

A great message always came about

Relevant today, as ever they could be

His stories have aged like The Great Gatsby

The reason he is so great isn’t hard to conceive

One of his messages was just to believe.

As I read his stories, not only did I learn

But more knowledge and creativity were always yearned.

Horton Hears a Who

Green Eggs and Ham

Yertle The Turtle

And even the Grinch too!

All have shaped how we learn today

Simply by being there when it was time

To hit the hay.

Seuss help kids all over the place

Get comfortable with words at a nice slow pace

Even if you are a big as an Elephant

Or as small as a Who

Dr. Seuss knew you could read it

He believed in you!

You know who we are

And you know where we stand

Dr. Seuss influenced literacy all over the land.

You cannot deny

No, you won’t even dare

No other childrens’ authors even compare

Time is short, yes, don’t be bitter

Let’s move on now, to the good Dr.’s Twitter. 

CRAP

                I chose this picture because the message makes itself clear to the viewer almost instantly. First you see the phone, then you notice the scorch marks and immediately, you start looking for answers in the corner. "Oh! It's  an ad for Tobasco sauce! I get it; The phone is burnt because of how hot the sauce is!" The use of red, which is associated with the color of the sauce, was also a good choice for the editor and designer of the poster. Overall I think this is a very effective ad for those who like really hot sauce.

Baron

“I found that I had become so used to composing virtual prose at a keyboard that I could no longer draft anything coherent directly onto paper.”

I know what he means by this. I suffer through the same thing but with animation. I used to love drawing, but now that I am proficient in 3D animation, I find it as the most tedious thing someone can make me do. I hate how to make a drawing move you have to redraw everything in the picture. Stupid. I like being able to just move something when I want and only having to move that piece.

“Each new literacy technology begins with a restricted communication function and is available only to a small number of initiates.”

This makes sense because people are a skeptical breed. We like what we know. When someone comes up with a new revolutionary idea, we are very weary of it until it is tried and tried again.

“While brave new literacy technologies offer new opportunities for producing and manipulating text, they also present new opportunities for fraud.”

This is very true. Before the wide use of “copy and paste”, Plagiarism was very time consuming and not worth the risk of getting caught. It took just as long to write someone else’s ideas as to jot down your own. The internet also helps by pooling in a bunch of resources to choose from to rip material from. I had an entire five page paper in high school that was completely plagiarized.  It was a health project and no one used their own work. I literally cut and paste three full wiki articles and I received a 92% on it. (I would not do this again.)

“Humanists have long been considered out of the technology loop”

I’d have to go with a “you don’t say!” here. The name implies that they feel that humans should be more organic in their actions and less artificial.  The term usually applies to the people who use more technology than say, the Amish,   but would never dream of pushing our technology further. They’re like Grandparents. They’ll use a cell phone, a TV, and remotes, but a computer might just be pushing it.

“It is true that some well-known writers have rejected new-fangledness”

As a child of the internet and computer age, I find this hard to believe, but I am sure that there are some older writers that prefer the good ol’ days of type writing or even pencil. Thoreau believed that telegraphs were unnecessary due to the fact that there is nothing that Maine would ever need to communicate to Texas. Well, time as proved that wrong on many occasions and shows us that new technologies can create new problems, but also solve old. 

“The telephone was initially received as an interesting but impractical technology for communication”

It’s funny how looking back into the history of an everyday object can shock you. You’d think that everyone would have been initially on board for something like a telephone because everyone today uses one. I bet you cannot name a single person that you personally know that has never used the phone at least once in their lives. Funny how perspective changes over time.

Hooks

Hooks talks about how difficult it was for her to write her autobiography the way she originally wanted because she could never get into the creative mindset necessary to do so. For a while she talked about  how she tried to subdue a part of herself because she thought that that part of her was holding her back. She realized though, that the only thing holding her back was herself. After she let that part of her through, she found that writing was much easier in the mindset that she had as a child.

1.      She meant that she wanted to keep the uneducated/too young version of herself out of the story as she felt that she didn’t want the memories so much as she wanted the feeling evoked be each memory and she felt that the part of her was holding her back and she wanted to rid herself of it. However, she wasn’t able to write well until she let that side out.

2.      Bio-mythography is the invention of memories to make up for lost details in your past. She says herself that there is a particular memory that she isn’t even sure actually happened, so yes. She does have this in her story.

3.      Hooks uses the image of a memory to frame her writing. She goes through each memory and gets as many details down as possible. I go through others’ writings, find quotes, and expand on those quotes. It’s worked pretty well so far.

AEI1:

            It shows that she is partially afraid of showing a certain part of her in her writings, which makes me view her as kind of afraid. You should embrace every part of yourself as an enhancement. Only then will it work as one. You can’t expect to write great unless you put all of yourself into your writing.

Brandt

“Sponsors seemed a fitting term for those who turned up typically in people’s memories of literacy learning.”

            This quote makes sense to me as when I think back to my early reading days, I remember my mom always reading me the old Dr. Seuss books. “Green Eggs and Ham” was always a favorite of mine.  My mom also bought me two books filled with Shel Silverstein poetry and short stories. I’ve read everything in both multiple times. I’ve grown up loving rhymes and childish stories. I still love the more abstract artwork used to illustrate the books as well.

“Throughout their lives, affluent people from high caste racial groups have multiple and redundant contacts with powerful literary sponsors as a part of their economic privileges.”

            You can see with this quote that there are many aspects of life (in America) made specifically for English speaking Americans. Sure there are some children’s shows that teach basics of Spanish,  like Dora the Explorer, but even shows like that are more geared towards teaching English speakers how to speak Spanish and would be no use to someone with Spanish as their first language.  

There is a quote about the raising literary standards in society today. It states that a lot of the times jobs can disappear because of changing technologies like computers and phones. Like in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Mr. Bucket loses his job at the toothpaste factory because of machines being more productive.