Caitlin Bruggeman

Dr Seuss,

Your books have followed me through life, and have been the backdrop to every
scene. On my sixth Christmas I received Six by Seuss from Santa, and I never put it
down. I read each story daily. My favorite book, The Lorax, followed me from my warm
blue cushioned rocking chair to the dewy grass of the amp Wapsie field. I shared your
stories with friends, campers, and family. It's hard to explain how your illustrations and
words reached out and pulled me down, but I have been preaching The Lorax ever since.

I'm not quite sure which theme from The Lorax influences me the most; the
indifference demonstrated by our society or that our economies need to grow
exponentially. I see at least twenty things daily that are unnecessarily using energy,
leaving carbon footprints all over our schools, homes, and workplaces. Our country is
falling into an endless cycle of waste, and we have no idea how to stop it. It seems an
easy problem to solve, so easy a child could fix it. Society decides to turn its ugly head
the other way, ignoring pollution and habitat destruction, believing it will never kill us...
just our children. Your book zeros in on the solution to our planet's destruction, the
children, teaching the future generation the harm we can inflict upon mother earth if we
do not change our ways. Each year at a local summer camp, Camp Wapsie, I make sure
to read The Lorax, hoping that somehow I can spark an interest in some child and make
them think next time they drop their plastic trash on the ground.

The Lorax made me a "green" child at a young age, running through my woods
with flowers in my hair and mud on my knees with rhymes and rainbows streaming
 through my head. I would catch minnows and frogs only to walk upstream and release
them after feeling guilty for separating a family or ruining a friendship. I felt sorry for the
bee I accidentally leaned on, pressing its stinger in to my leg. I probably would have lived
outside, barefoot wading through the creek all my life if my parents would have
permitted me. I lived for the outdoors screaming "Onceler!" at my parents as I was forced
into the restrictive confinements of tennis shoes and locked in doors to take a nap or eat
my lunch.

Growing up with The Lorax in mind made me sad to see forest fires and high
pollution rates on the rise. I've been known to get into arguments with random strangers
seen littering, or stop to pick up a piece of trash stuck in a lilac bush. I'm okay with being
called a hippie or an environmentalist, but I am not crazy; crazy is what our society has
become. It makes me wonder if after reading The Lorax to their children some parents are
still too dense to grasp the underlying meaning.

To me The Lorax will always be the definition of my childhood and the roadmap
to my future. The Lorax lives on within me and hopefully one day will live on within my
children.

Stay Green,
Caitlin Bruggeman