“Congratulations! Today is your day. You’re off to Great Places! You’re off and away! You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose.”

Dr. Seuss’ optimistic “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!,” the last book published before his death, embodies some of the key components of his writing style: lively vocabulary coupled with rhyming schemes, fanciful and curious characters, and a quirky but deliberate sense of humor, all combined to share an important moral to his readers.

“Dr. Seuss is part of the cultural background of America, as much so as any other of the traditions,” said Mike Rogalla, children’s librarian at Champaign Public Library.

On March 2, a movie version of Dr. Seuss’ book “The Lorax” will be released in movie theaters, marking his 108th birthday.

Theodor Seuss Geisel won two Academy Awards, two Emmy awards, a Peabody award and the Pulitzer Prize, during his 87-year life.

In 1937, he published his first children’s book, “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street,” under his pen name “Dr. Seuss.”

Geisel added the “Dr.” to his pen name in reference to the doctorate he never finished, according to a biography by Myra Kibler.

In a 1960 Good Housekeeping interview, Geisel said, “My father has always wanted to see a Dr. in front of my name, so I attached it. I figured by doing that, I saved him about $10,000.” In 1955, Dartmouth awarded him the doctorate of humane letters, legitimizing the title.

Geisel submitted his first book to many publishing companies, but they all rejected it. Then one day he ran into an old Dartmouth friend.

“His friend was an editor who was looking for a book, and he was an author looking to write one. It was kind of in happenstance that he was able to get into children’s publishing,” Rogalla said.

“And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street” was the first glance into the brilliant world that Dr. Seuss created in his stories.

When working on “Horton Hears a Who!” in the 1940s, World War II forced Geisel to take a break from children’s writing and contribute to the war effort as a political cartoonist.

In this role, he created illustrations that had very telling, often critical remarks, said Mark Leff, associate professor of history.

While the seriousness of his political cartoons seemed to differ drastically from the whimsical tone in his children’s books, the theme of morality was still visible in all of his work, Leff said.

“He was very much a globally aware person who addressed the issues that are important for grown-ups … and in a way that children could understand and incorporate into their own world upbringing,” Rogalla said.

Geisel presented messages that could be grasped easily. His view of “a person’s a person no matter how small” was reflected both in his political and children’s work, Leff said.

“Some of his books have a political bent to them. So I think his theme (in his work) is that he is trying to tell more. There is more behind the story,” said Lora Fegley, director of children’s services at the Urbana Free Library. “His stories are really deep and multilayered, and that’s what makes them so interesting.”

Geisel’s 1957 book “The Cat in the Hat” brought him his most success and changed the world of children’s literature.

The book was created in response to an article in Life that said more engaging books were needed in children’s literature because the current books used were too dull and boring.

“Geisel framed his stories with this very familiar textual device of rhyming and lyrical lilting to make it more familiar territory for transitional readers,” said Kate Quealy-Gainer, assistant editor at the Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books.

The rhyming, the wonderful illustrations, the silliness of a nonsense, whimsical world and the appeal to the emotional directness that children operate in made the books successful for readers, Quealy-Gainer said.

Schools across the nation will celebrate Dr. Seuss’ birthday on March 2, which is also the 14th annual Read Across America Day.

On March 3, the Read Across America program will hold a free event at Lincoln Square Mall starting at 10 a.m., where they will have many activities and will give out items like books and backpacks, said Fegley, who is on the committee.

As well as teaching and entertaining children, Dr. Seuss’ books have a quality to them that connects generations and encourages family bonding.

“Probably the best way to enjoy him as an adult — children will just instinctively do that — is not to think so much about it, but remember what you felt like as a child reading these books for the first time, and try to recall that emotion,” Rogalla said. “And that is probably the best way to share that with a child.”