The Importance of Sneetches

Lately, I’m thinking a lot about Sneetches. As a child, I loved Dr. Seuss’s story about the silly birds who thought having stars on your belly made you somehow better than birds without stars upon “thars,” possibly because I spent much of my childhood feeling like the plain-bellied Sneetch in a world full of star-covered specimens. As an adult, I’ve realized just how much truth Dr. Seuss piled into that short, silly tale – especially the jaded departing comment from Sylvester McMonkey McBean, who writes the entire population off with the toss-away line: “Everyone knows you can’t teach a Sneetch.”

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