My 6-year-old daughter Ava has the theater bug. More specifically, she has the musical theater bug, which began last year after seeing the Albert Lea High School production of “Cinderella.” For some girls the princess obsession is an inborn force too powerful to control. My wife and I did nothing to encourage this, and yet it came. We realize it’s bigger than both us, so we’ve just embraced it. After attending this fall’s musical, Ava’s obsession has momentarily turned to Gertrude, Horton, the Cat in the Hat, and others. It’s been a nice break.

Those who saw our local school’s production of “Seussical the Musical” last week know how wonderful it was. As the auditorium tech coordinator, I’d seen a number of rehearsals and had Seuss on the brain for several weeks, but it wasn’t until opening night that I was reminded of how brilliant Seuss’s work really is.

“Seussical” includes characters and storylines borrowed from a number of Seuss books but relies heavily on “Horton Hears a Who” — the saga of an elephant who hears a cry for help from a tiny person dwelling on a speck of dust. No one else can hear it, but Horton believes and has faith, ignoring criticism and insisting, “A person’s a person, no matter how small,” an empowering message for kids who feel as though their voices aren’t heard or respected, for anyone marginalized in our society who feels no one will listen.

And when the tiny citizens of Whoville join their voices together shouting for help one last time, it’s the smallest among them, a boy named Jo-Jo, whose voice puts them over the top allowing them to be heard by Horton’s critics, saving themselves and reconciling Horton and his friends. Every voice, every effort in a social movement has the potential to make a difference.

Oddly enough, though, sometimes peace actually requires separation rather than immediate reconciliation. In “Marvin K. Mooney, Will You Please Go Now!” Seuss limits himself to words from a first-grade vocabulary list as the narrator orders, pleads, and begs Marvin K. Mooney to go, to “please go now” throughout. We’re not exactly sure why Marvin K. Mooney must go. He just must. The narrator doesn’t “care how.” But Marvin K. Mooney must “please go now!”

As a parent, the most peaceful thing I can do in some situations is to simply “go now,” to leave the room or to send one of my daughters up to hers. My father-in-law calls these moments “spacing problems.” That is, there isn’t enough room for us to all get along at the moment. We just need some time and space to shake whatever nastiness is making one or both of us treat the other so poorly.

On a political level, the “please go now” mantra has the potential to work magic. I have to think former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich might have come to his senses and actually done the right thing had there been a rally with thousands of people all reading “Marvin K. Mooney” in unison but replacing Mooney’s name with Blago’s: “You can go by foot. You can go by cow. We don’t care how. Milorad Blagojevich, will you please go now!” A bit brash, but effective.

A book with a more obvious didactic appeal is “The Sneetches.” Here Seuss creates a wonderfully simple critique of racism’s stupidity and the odd and often arbitrary ways in which we define ourselves. In the story there are two types of creatures called Sneetches — those who have “bellies with stars” and the “Plain-Belly” Sneetches who have “none upon thars.” The Sneetches with stars initially discriminate against the plain bellied ones because having a star clearly indicates superiority.

“The Sneetches” also smartly comments on how economics can divide us. Many of us, consciously or not, define and divide ourselves by our spending (McMansions anyone?). When Sylvester McMonkey McBean brings a machine to town that — for a fee — will give any plain-bellied Sneetch a star, the Sneetches with original stars on their bellies have a new problem. Their signs of superiority are no longer distinct. Fortunately, McBean also has a star-off machine, so the “superior” Sneetches can spend more money to distinguish themselves as superior once again. The cycle goes on and on, and McBean is like two opposing Fox News and MSNBC political shows wrapped into one, benefiting from keeping the ideological divide nice and wide. It isn’t until all the Sneetches are broke — and McBean rich — that they see the light. But they do see it and achieve peace.

I’m going to resist the temptation to explore the dangers of capitalist consumerism further and instead simply recommend Seuss’s “Yertle the Turtle” for a nice criticism of Hitler and fascism in general, “The Butter Battle Book” for its spoof of the U.S./Soviet arms race, and “To Think that I Saw It on Mulberry Street” or “Oh, the Thinks You Can Think” for a celebration of human imagination.

Thank goodness for Seuss.

So I’m glad Ava’s musical theater bug is currently of the Seuss strain. That message of “How lucky you are” from “Seussical” is so important as we celebrate Thanksgiving and enter the holiday season. I know Seuss will inevitably become less and less attractive to Ava while she progresses as a reader, but I suspect the lessons she’s learned from him will endure.

Jeremy Corey-Gruenes is a member of Paths to Peace and teaches English and Humanities at Albert Lea High School.