So much information crosses my desk--coming and going--that sometimes I lose track. Over a month ago, someone was kind enough to fax me the following story from the St. Cloud Visitor, in St. Cloud Minnesota.
I emailed the author and asked for reprint permission. I heard nothing until today, when the editor called. He told me that the author had been ill, and my email request had just gotten to him. He graciously gave me permission to reprint.
I thought it a touching story and a wonderful illustration of how to creatively tell the pro-life story. See if you don't agree.
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“Horton Hears a Who” and Students Hear What’s True
By Irene Voth St. Cloud Visitor Staff Writer
Elizabeth Boeddeker said she doesn’t know if “Horton Hears a Who” was intended as pro-life literature when Dr. Seuss wrote it in 1954. Probably most famous for ”How the Grinch Stole Christmas” and “The Cat in the Hat,” the renowned children’s author who was awarded the Catholic Library Association’s Regina Medal in 1982 for his many value-laden contributions to children’s literature died in 1991.
But whether Dr. Seuss intended a pro-life message in “Horton Hears a Who,” such lines as “A person’s a person no matter how small” and “I’ve got to protect them; I’m bigger than they” launched in Boeddeker an idea for a pro-life presentation appropriate for children of all ages. She found support for her idea in the Sauk Rapids chapter of Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life president, Marge Nierengarten.
“It was her idea, and I told her to run with it,” Nierengarten said. On Jan. 13, Boeddeker gave her presentation to children in kindergarten through second grade at Sacred Heart School in Sauk Rapids.
Nierengarten was on hand to help and lend moral support, she said. “We thought it was a really wonderful idea,” said Erin Hatlestad, principal of Sacred Heart School, where the teachers and school board previewed Boeddeker’s presentation before inviting her into Sacred Heart’s classrooms. Although Boeddeker has a degree in elementary education, the Sacred Heart parishioner said she is just an ordinary mom who reads to her own child-- Stephen is in second grade at Sacred Heart--as well as to the children in her in-home day care.
While she regularly reads a number of Dr. Seuss’ books to her charges, Boeddeker said the pro-life message in “Horton Hears a Who” became very clear to during a reading last November. But along with that message, she said, came another--to do something about it.
“My sister and I brainstormed about it,” Boeddeker said, referring to Ellen Roers, a member of St. Ann Parish in Brandon and the mother of eight. The result was a presentation in which Boeddeker warmed up her listeners with this question: “Can you name anything that is real even though you can’t see it”?
To their answers, which included the wind, germs and God, Boeddeker added babies, in that babies -- before they are born -- are also real people, just small. She then read the book, and afterward asked the children to reflect on Horton’s dedication to preserving the lives of the Whos, small as they were.
Following the reading, the children were shown a few minutes of a video showing ultrasound videos of active babies at various stages of gestation. Then the children were invited to take the shoe and sock off of one foot and have it traced onto a sheet of paper. A gold sticker of a baby’s feet at 10 weeks’ gestation was then applied to the paper so the children could compare.
“The kids seemed really interested,” Boeddeker said after the day of presentations. Boeddeker also made pro-life presentations to grades 3-6, but said a last minute change of plans precluded the reading of “Horton Hears a Who” to those students.
Rather than having a foot traced, older children were invited to take one of the newborn diapers into which a prayer card had been placed and told they could spiritually adopt a baby by praying for it during its nine months in the womb. Boeddeker said she learned later that one classroom of fifth-graders decided as a group to spiritually adopt a baby. “It is my hope that next year, people might volunteer to go into all the Christian schools with this idea,” Boeddeker said.
So much information crosses my desk--coming and going--that sometimes I lose track. Over a month ago, someone was kind enough to fax me the following story from the St. Cloud Visitor, in St. Cloud Minnesota.