I Love Saying "Yertle;" It Feels Good on My Tongue

I know, up on top you are seeing great sights, but down here at the bottom we, too, should have rights.

One of the neat things I experienced about being a youth services librarian was rediscovering the picture books my parents read to me as a child. I had forgotten most of them, but each time I see the familiar pictures the memories and feelings come right back. After I started blogging about the last presidential election, my parents commented about my liberal beliefs. We never really talked explicitly about politics in our house. Yet I knew where they stood through all the small things they said and did, and that shaped me. One of the major influences, I think, was the books they chose to read to me as a child. Like I said, I didn’t even consciously remember many of them. Yet in looking at the messages communicated in those books, I can see how they taught me about the world. We lived in small towns populated predominantly by white people, for instance, yet I was exposed to a broader spectrum of children through characters like the urban blacks in Ezra Jack Keats’ books and learned they were just like me. And how can one not become an environmentalist after falling in love with The Lorax? My favorite Dr. Seuss, though, was/is Yertle the Turtle. That, I believe, is the foundation of all my political beliefs.