By Amber Cox
A 107th birthday calls for a humongous birthday celebration and that’s exactly what area students bestowed on their hero, Dr. Seuss, author of 44 children’s books.
His birthday, March 2, was named National Read Across America Day and his life was celebrated in area schools the week of Feb. 28 to March 4 during Read Across America Week.
The Clara Barton School in Bordentown City celebrated the week with experiments creating the slime, Oobleck.
Oobleck gets its name from the book “Bartholomew and the Oobleck” where the slime fell from the sky and almost took over the kingdom.
On March 4 the students voted to slime one of the faculty members at the school.
Principal Daniel Riether in spite of some blatant vote-rigging won the sliming by 1,239 votes. The runner-up was third-grade teacher Stacy Antonelli-Scanlan with 354 votes.
Mr. Riether trying to decline the “honor” joked around and tried to make the kids think that he didn’t really win, according to Basic Skills teacher Alexandra Guido.
”The principal teased them,” she said. “They all knew that he had the most votes.”
All of the teachers had their faces and names on gallon containers and beans were used to vote for the winner.
”His container was halfway full,” Ms. Guido said. “The other teachers were barely covered. He dumped some of the beans out so it didn’t look like he won. The kids went completely batty, screaming and yelling because they knew they had voted to slime him.”
Ms. Guido said he eventually gave in and admitted he dumped out the beans.
”We did a lot of great things this week but seeing their principal slimed was by far the biggest motivator to participate,” she said. “It’s going to be tempting to top that.”
St. Mary’s School in Bordentown City celebrated Dr. Seuss’ birthday by having the students dress as their favorite character and they made green eggs and ham for breakfast. In the afternoon the pre-k through first grade classes joined the upperclassmen to read their favorite stories.
Springfield Elementary School in Springfield had a number of events throughout the week, including breakfast with the Cat in the Hat for the preschoolers, a special family movie night March 4 for a showing of “Horton Hears a Hoo,” Wacky Wednesday where students showed up with miss-matched attire and read in the hallways and Pajama Thursday.

