Fez.
I knew right then and there as I positioned the three tiles on the board, that the game would be mine.
The “z” landed on a triple letter score square, which put me in a considerable lead in the otherwise close Scrabble game I was playing with my son Jack.
The word fez was an artifact from another culture. A story read. A word remembered. A Turkish hat.
Dr. Seuss, in his infinite wisdom, opened young eyes to the expansive view reading would take them to ? “Oh, the Places You”ll Go.”
As a life-long reader, and one who has loved to read from as early as I can recall, reading has been that gateway, that comfy armchair travel, to places and cultures experienced through a story.
A quote from one of this year”s Big Read bookmarks, an excerpt from contemporary novelist Jhumpa Lahiri”s novel The Namesake, says it well: “That”s the thing about books; they let you travel without moving your feet.”
The Big Read, one of four initiatives supported by The Lake County Office of Education (LCOE) Literacy Task Force was created to bring reading back to the heart of American culture.
The goals and initiatives of the task force encourage and promote the love of reading ? from birth, through childhood, to the strata of adulthood.
That love of reading will take you to places, both imaginative and real.
When I reflect on students I have known who have valued their education, and who now have an advantage in the world, they are the ones who loved to read.
One year, as an activity in our study of the novel Tom Sawyer, I asked students to bring in and present special mementos from their childhood. In this class of bright and shining students, almost all included a book they loved as a child.
As we celebrate Dr. Seuss, as we read across America, read to a child and remember to curl up and read for you.
“The more you read the more things you will know. The more you learn the more places you”ll go.
Robin Fogel-Shrive
Cobb
