This summer at Universal Studios Islands of Adventure, I especially enjoyed Seussville, and there I especially enjoyed The Street of the Lifted Lorax.
The Lorax was one of Josh’s favorite bedtime books. So much so, that he had it memorized and could recite long parts of it in his adorable one-year-old voice. Timothy also loved it as a child. Steve was the one who bought the book, and I will always remember his voice reading it and then Josh’s baby voice chiming in.
As a children’s librarian, it seems especially appropriate to celebrate The Lorax with this sequence of pictures:
They had a plaque quoting from the beginning of the book:
Here’s the devastation left behind after the Thneed factory ran out of truffula trees:
“On the end of a rope he lets down a tin pail and you have to toss in fifteen cents and a nail and the shell of a great-great-great-grandfather snail.”
“Then he grunts, ‘I will call you by Whisper-ma-Phone, for the secrets I tell are for your ears alone.'”
“SLUPP! Down slupps the Whisper-ma-Phone to your ear and the old Once-ler’s whispers are not very clear, since they have to come down through a snergelly hose, and he sounds as if he had smallish bees up his nose.
” ‘Now I’ll tell you,’ he says, with his teeth sounding gray, ‘how the Lorax got lifted and taken away…'”
They tried to put a more positive spin on it, but the stump below is supposed to say UNLESS:
“UNLESS someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.
“SO . . . Catch!” says the Once-ler. He lets something fall. “It’s a Truffula Seed. It’s the last one of all! You’re in charge of the last of the Truffula Seeds. And Truffula Trees are what everyone needs. Plant a new Truffula. Treat it with care. Give it clean water. And feed it fresh air. Grow a forest. Protect it from axes that hack. Then the Lorax and all of his friends may come back.”
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