"How The Grinch Stole Christmas" by Dr. Suess

Since the holidays are coming up, I thought it would only be fitting to do this last Suess review on "How The Grinch Stole Christmas." As crazy as it sounds, I have never read this story of Suess'. This story pretty much talks about how the Grinch disguised himself as Santa, and stole everyone's presents. However, he realized that on Christmas everyone still celebrated, despite being robbed of their presents. Similar to many of Suess' earlier children's stories, he uses only one or two basic colors in his story. In this particular story, he uses the color red, and in almost every page he uses the red in the Grinch's eye to symbolize his malicious intentions. However, by the end of the book the Grinch is so humbled by everyone's holiday spirit, that he, himself becomes overjoyed for the holidays.

Although this story is a holiday classic, I think it teaches children some great basic lessons. That is, you shouldn't need presents to be happy (many children may still argue that concept). But in all reality if you choose to read this to your class, you should be very careful what lessons you extract from the story, and how you introduce the story. Many students may not celebrate Christmas, so you want to make sure you somehow introduce the story in ways that every student can relate.