Feliz cumpleaños, Dr. Seuss!

Experts agree that good literacy skills are essential for academic success. This is one of the reasons why the National Education Association launched Read Across America Day, an annual reading and motivation program. The day is celebrated every year at the beginning of March on or around the birthday of one of our country’s biggest literacy advocates, Dr. Seuss. To celebrate, we've collected some of our favorite Seuss-themed resources in English and Spanish for you to enjoy with your kids.

Dr. Seuss, whose real name was Theodor Seuss Geisel, wrote 46 children's books during his lifetime. Most of them remain bestsellers to this day, both in the United States and internationally. One of his most popular books, "The Cat in the Hat," was written after Life magazine published a literacy report revealing that school-aged children weren't learning to read because all their books were too boring. So, Geisel wrote a book that used 250 words that all first graders should recognize and know how to read. Now, his books are available in both English and Spanish.

Many of Dr. Seuss’ books have been translated into Spanish. However, sometimes translations are taken too literally and fail to capture the essence of the book. And Seuss’ books with their rhyming nonsensical words are not an easy work to translate. This is why we love the translations done by Yanitzia Canetti, a superb translator and author in her own right."Hay un molillo en mi bolsillo!" and "Yoruga la Tortuga y otros cuentos" are a few titles under Canetti's name that are not simply nonsense translations.

Created by Random House Children’s Books, Seussville.com is an interactive online site for children completely centered around the characters from Dr. Seuss’s books. There you’ll find sections for parents and educators, but the majority of the pages focus on games and activities, videos, books and more for children to enjoy. The graphics are exceptional and perfectly represent the familiar characters from his books.

The award-winning PBS Kids TV series, "The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That!" focuses on developing an interest in science and math among children ages 3 to 6. The PBS Kids Lab is a website with dozens of activities that children can do on their own—or with the help of mami and papi—to explore everything from mapping to spatial skills. The best part is that the site offers activities in both English and Spanish.

Check out this tutorial for making your own activity blocks with Dr. Seuss books from Sugar Bee Crafts. To make things a bit easier, you could simply buy wooden blocks from your local craft store instead of cutting your own. Younger children especially would benefit from using the blocks to learn their colors, numbers and even letters. Beginning readers can use them to find rhyming words a la Dr. Seuss. For a bilingual twist, look for and use Dr. Seuss books in Spanish to photocopy, cut and paste onto the blocks.

We love this recycled Lorax-themed puppet theater craft by Kathleen at Katydid and Kid, which encourages your children to create their own stories based on Dr. Seuss characters… or any story character for that matter. This is an awesome way to strengthen your child’s pre-literacy skills because creating their own plays requires them to think about story lines, sequence, characters, scripts and conclusions. What a great way to nurture imaginative play in your children!