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WILKES-BARRE — Do peanut trees grow in the United States, China or Japan? Are freckles contagious? How old do you have to be to be a Boy Scout? To fry an egg?
Wilkes-Barre Police Officer James Fisher posed the queries from a Dr. Seuss’s book in a second grade version of a quiz show, with Kistler Elementary School students set up in three teams (a fourth was comprised of representatives from Panama here through a program at Wilkes University).
Some, of course, were trick questions. Peanuts grow underground, not on trees, for example. That one fooled the second grade students and the Panama adults. But this was about reading and learning and fun. And as part of a week-long celebration of the national Read Across America campaign, Fisher’s performance in wife Dionne’s classroom Wednesday was a hit on all three fronts.
Students laughed, clapped, and puzzled with each question, taking the contest semi-seriously even if the awards were Smarties candies for winners and Airheads candies for the others — “I used to get Dum Dums,” Fisher chuckled, “but I couldn’t find any.”
Not that the clever candy options really mattered. Fisher conceded that most kids preferred the Airheads, so they just got what they liked.
Actual green eggs
School halls are lined with art materials — scissors, balloons, paper, glue and more — used in various projects through the week, as well as a popcorn machine cotton candy spinner. Dr. Seuss songs (“You’re a mean one, Mr. Grinch” among them) float constantly from the main office. And each day this week has a different Seussical theme, and Wednesday was crazy hat day.
It began with a gathering of more than 70 guest readers in the library for a breakfast of, yes, actual green eggs (scrambled) and ham. “Once I year, I have to eat them,” Principal Margo Serafini laughed. The room was packed with the likes of Mayor Tony George, school board members Joe Caffrey and Denise Thomas, and state Rep. Eddie Day Pashinski (D-Wilkes-Barre), to name a few.
Two stood out simply by garb. Fisher and Wilkes-Barre Fire Department deputy chief Alan Klapat came clad in full uniform. On the other end of the outfit spectrum, some teachers and staff dressed as Seussian characters, with more than a few Things One and Two.
After breakfast and a group photo in the stairwell, guests split off to read in different classrooms. Heading to a third-grade room, Klapat held up a a copy of “Horton Hatches the Egg” and smiled “My go-to book!” He read to teacher Erin McGavin’s third-grade class where the amalgam of hats included a hand-made snowflake chapeau on Gabriella Rivera’s head. “My brother has a Horton hat,” she noted.
And the answers to the other questions from Fisher’s “The Cat’s Quizzer”? Freckles, of course, are not contagious (the students got that one right). You have to be 7 to be a Cub Scout and 11 to be a Boy Scout, and the egg thing?
“Ask your mother,” Fisher smiled. “If she lets you fry an egg, you’re old enough.”
