Schools throughout America celebrate the birthday of Dr. Seuss on March 2 with the Read Across America program. The good doctor’s birthday was celebrated one day early at St. Jerome’s Regional School in Tamaqua, partly due to an impending winter storm.

Established in 1997 through the National Education Association, the first Read Across America Day was held March 2, 1998, using the birthday of author Dr. Seuss as an incentive to get more kids to read.

Theodore Seuss Geisel wrote and illustrated more than 60 children’s books that have been loved by generations of children under the pen name Dr. Seuss.

He began writing children’s books in 1936 with “And to Think I Saw It on Mulberry Street.” His first four children’s books were written before World War II.

During the war, Geisel’s work consisted of political cartoons in support of the war efforts. He joined the U.S. Army in 1943, where he served as commander of the Animation Department of the First Motion Picture Unit of the United States Army Air Forces. The unit was responsible for creating documentaries and Army training films.

After leaving military service, he returned to writing children’s books, including such classics as “If I Ran the Zoo” and “Horton Hears a Who!”

A 1954 report on the illiteracy of America’s children led to a challenge for Geisel to write a simple book for beginning readers. Nine months later, the “Cat in the Hat” was born.

At St. Jerome’s, staff members from St. Luke’s Miners Campus were a big hit, both as guest readers and as Seuss characters, such as The Cat in the Hat and Thing 1 and Thing 2. Two members of the preschool class had choice words for the “cat,” upset with the mess he made in the book that was being read by Maureen Donovan.

Reading to the first grade class was Dr. Joanne Calabrese. Her participation in the day was credited to St. Luke’s strong belief in early literacy programs and to her son, James, who is a student at St. Jerome’s.

“Read Across America was a perfect opportunity for me as a doctor and as a mom.”