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Parent teacher Ashlee Wrightnour inspects first grader Rishi Patel’s Lorax character he made during the “Read Across America” celebration at St. Jude’s School in Mountaintop on Monday.

First grader Jordan Paulshock makes a Dr. Suess character the Lorax out of construction paper during the “Read Across America” celebration at St. Jude’s School in Mountaintop on Monday.

St. Jude’s School teacher Rose Lee Bednarz reads a Dr. Suess book to first grade students during the “Read Across America” celebration at St. Jude’s School in Mountaintop on Monday.

First grade students made Dr. Suess’s character the Lorax out of construction paper during the “Read Across America” celebration at St. Jude’s School in Mountaintop on Monday.

WRIGHT TWP. — One thing stood out right from the start: That Lorax has “poofy eyebrows.”

“He looks like a man with giant hair,” Jordan Paulschock said as he glued the yellow eyebrows onto an orange paper Lorax, hero of the eponymously-named book by Dr. Seuss.

Jordan and his first-grade classmates at St. Jude Elementary School had watched the animated version of tree-savior saga, and listened as teacher Rose Lee Bednarz read the book. Now it was time to make a 3-D version, all part of national Read Across America day, a paean to things Seussian and an event designed to encourage reading.

Because weather had again delayed the start of school and classes were running on a compressed schedule, some of the work was pre-done. The orange construction paper that would become each student’s Lorax stood already stapled into cylinders, and parent/helper Ashlee Wrightnour sat clipping the pre-drawn eyebrows into arches.

Students still got to cut out and paste other parts. Eyebrows and mustaches, both being yellow, proved a bit of a bother (with apologies to another classic children’s literature character who covets honey in the Hundred Acre Wood). Parent/helper Ann Papciak offered a hint: The mustache was bigger.

And upon cutting out the foliage for the Truffula Tree, one young lad decided the Lorax wasn’t hirsute enough.

“It’s not a beard, Patrick,” Papciak advised Patrick Smith, who dutifully removed the Truffula from the chin area of his Lorax.

At one point a veteran film buff might have suspected the students were working off a different movie entirely, as they unwittingly seemed to meme the famous scene from 1960’s Spartacus.

“I’m the Lorax, and I speak for the trees!” Jordan Paulschock said.

”I’m the Lorax, and I speak for the trees!” Patrick insisted.

”I’m the Lorax, and I speak for the trees!” Brook Wrightnour countered.

The Lorax may have been a relatively small part of a Read Across America day filled with older students reading to younger, or students decorating book covers, but one constant became evident as a new cohort of first-graders clambered to the tables to start gluing together their Loraxes (Loraces?).

Quoth one boy seeing the paper pieces before him: “These are poofy eyebrows!”