When I was 5 years old they had a book fair at my school. At the fair they had a copy of a bright yellow covered book called "One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish". I wanted that book in the same way i want a Ferrari today.
I got the book and it fired me for weeks. I learned to read it, despite my refusal to learn to read "Dick and Jane" and I saw value in learning to read. Although I found the guy's name "Dr Seuss" completely incomprehensible.
By the time I was 8 I'd forgotten lines like "I could eat them in a house, I could eat them with a mouse," baseball and football were far more attractive. I was too young to be interested in girls so there seemed to be little sense in reading. Even though I still would look at books with the same sense of awe and wonder, considering the adventures they contained. But comic books filled that need almost as well.
Then I discovered "Alice In Wonderland" and the beauty of words on paper came flooding back to me.
That was what Dr Seuss had taught me: there are secrets that can only be discovered in reading. I don't think much about the TV shows and movies. (The work with Chuck Jones does have it own different genius)  They weren't the point. The point was unraveling the mystery of words on a page, of having an imagination that only words could fire and explain.
Dr Seuss gave me a lot. Without him I'd probably never have read anything more than the latest "Fantastic Four" or "Spiderman," and perhaps not even that.
He taught me a love, a love of reading. So Happy Birthday Dr Seuss. I've received few finer gifts than what you gave to me.