Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/60893
TOP LEFT: AEA Organizational Consultant Mike Weaver reads to a classroom at Taft Elementary in Mesa. TOP RIGHT: AEA Vice- President Joe Thomas reads to a class at Acacia Elementary in Phoenix. RIGHT: Danny DeVito and Zac Efron read at the New York Public Library to the delight of third graders. Photo by Jason Kempin, Courtesy Getty Images Students at Ironwood School presented "The Lorax" as a play at a Read Across America breakfast. Actors DeVito and Efron delighted the children with a reading from "The Lorax." NEA President Dennis Van Roekel led a question-and-answer session with the actors and students. The children's favorite fuzzy orange character (and now movie star), the Lorax, surprised the students with an onstage appearance. DeVito also led the students in the Read Across America pledge, asking them to promise to read each day and each night. "As a kid, I remember thinking, 'What would it be like to go on this big adventure and learn what the Once-ler knows?' Now here I am, two decades later, voicing Ted in Dr. Seuss' 'The Lorax,'" said Efron. "It's an honor to not only be a part of this movie, but to work with the National Education Association's Read Across America to inspire the love of reading in millions of kids." The event concluded with New York's well known PS22 Chorus, an elementary school chorus from Public School 22 in Graniteville, Staten Island, singing the film's theme song, "Let It Grow." The book "The Lorax" also took center stage in events across the country with its message of preserving the environment. Global superstars Danny DeVito, Ed Helms, Zac Efron, Continued on next page AEA Advocate ❘ Summer 2012 19 "It's an honor to not only be a part of this movie, but to work with the National Education Association's Read Across America to inspire the love of reading in millions of kids." —Zac Efron