This is a great book illustrating, both in words and pictures, how bullying happens and what happens when we put our differences aside! It goes to show that with a little getting to know each other, everyone isn't so different after all (or that our commonality is that we are all unique or different in our own ways). ( )

THE SNEETCHES stands as one of the earliest and strongest anti-racism books for kids and adults.

While ZAX is kind of fun to read and act out,
it does make kids wonder why the ZAX weren't bright enough to just step to opposite sides.

To reprise the wonderful thrills of fear in The Pale Green Pants,
I hang a pair out in a tree every year on Halloween -
in case one of my former 4th grade students is coming by
to see that there actually still is "nobody inside 'em!" ( )

With obvious allusions to the Holocaust and Nazi Germany, this story does a great job of scaling it down to discuss discrimination with students. The colors and uniformity of the story show that we truly do not have that much that divides us, it is all artificial. I also love how it gets so much more chaotic near the end but it is still beautiful and the sneetches end up happier than ever because of it.

I read this to my boys but I bought it years before I had them for myself. I was introduced to it as an adult never having read it as a child. It just doesn't get any better than Too Many Daves and What Was I Afraid Of? My nephew came downstairs one night in the 1990s with his mother's stretch pants pulled up over his head. Ahh... the pale green pants with nobody in them.

Wonderful to read out loud.

The pale green pants, the Zax and the Sneetches stories have a great moral if you're one of those persnickity parents who needs one. ( )

My favorite Dr. Seuss book. ( )