A023 The Lorax Okay, Ifm going to speak about a book called gThe Lorax.h It was written by a man named Dr. Seuss, which is not his real name, but he wrote the book, and he drew the pictures, and he told the story in the form of a very long poem. And ah the pictures show a world that is similar to ours but is not the human world. And all of the characters, all the animals, and all the places have very special names and itfs written in a very playful way ah itfs a very interesting funny book in some ways, but itfs also a very very serious book. And the title of the book is gThe Lorax,h as I said, and that is a name of a character that appears in the book. But itfs not really the main character. I think the main character has to be a person whofs called gThe Once-ler.h And the Once-ler is a man or a being, wefll call him a man even though itfs not a human world, who lives outside of town and hefs a very mysterious person. Hefs a bit of a recluse, ah he not much is known about him, but if you go out there, and if you pay him, I canft remember, if you pay him a button and ah a seed and something in a bucket he will tell you his story. And a young boy goes out and he listens to the Once-lerfs story. And the Once-ler tells the story about arriving in the place where he lives, before there was a city, before there was a town: when there was nothing but the wild ah and environment which was filled with ah trees and animals and birds and fish and ah a beautiful landscape, and he arrived there as a young man and he had lots of dreams and hopes of success and the thing that he was most interested in about this place, the reason he stopped there, the reason the Once-ler stopped in this beautiful place, was because the trees called gTruffula trees.h Ah had very specific ah kind of ah tufts much like ah cotton tufts, I suppose, there were trees but they had instead of leafs they had these great big blooms of of fiber. And the fiber was soft, and and strong, and colorful, and beautiful, and perfect for what he was hoping to do in his life, which was to make something called a gthneed.h Now a thneed is something that looks a little bit useless but he advertised it very well he said you could use it as a sweater, or a basket, or a carrying case, or swaddling for babies, or a hammock. He he said you can use it for all these wonderful things and he started an advertising campaign as whose making these thneeds and people decided, gWell this is really cool. Everybody should have th- a thneed, and they became very very popular and he sold lots and lots of them. And to sell them, he had to chop down lots and lots of truffula trees. Well his business grew and his business grew and he called his family and he wrote to his relatives and everybody came and joined the company and a factory was built and ah pretty soon the area was manufacturing thneeds for thousands and millions of people around this this fantasy world. And the factories grew, and as these as these ah thneeds were being sold, of course the trees wee being chopped down at an increasing rate. And out of the trees out of the stumps of the dead trees came this character called gThe Lorax.h And thatfs the title of the book. And the Lorax was a kind of a forest creature who spoke for the trees because the trees had no voices of their own. and so he spoke to ah this Once-ler person, this Once-ler man, and he said, gHey you, youfre cutting down all the trees and ah youfre this is this is no good itfs itfs ah bad for the ah itfs bad for the natural world. The animals have not place to live now, ah youfre dirtying up the skies with your factory smoke and youfre dirtying the waters with your factory with your factory runoff, and ah the the beauty of this place is is being damaged, daily. And the Once-ler listened to him but was a little bit annoyed. He was a business man, he was a very busy person, and he didnft want to listen to the Lorax. And the Lorax continued to speak, and he said, gLook! Look! The animals are leaving. They have no place to go. Theyfre going to have to go somewhere and we donft know where because there arenft so many places left where these animals can liveh. But the once-ler of coarse, ah ignored him and for some sometimes the Once-ler would sit and listen to him and think, gOh hefs right.h But he couldnft stop. The business was going well, and businesses are designed to grow, and he couldnft stop it, and he didnft have the heart or the the courage to stand up and stop it. So the business continued to grow until finally one day, the last truffula tree was cut down and the forest was completely bare. And the business, of course, died. And the town remained and people continued to live there and they forgot the story about the thneeds and the trurffulas and the ah and the Lorax. But this one young boy of course who goes out to talk to the Once-ler and hears the story, thinks about it. And the man, Once-ler gives him one last piece of advice, ah at the very place where the Lorax, this this woodland creature finally disappeared, there was left a stone. And on the stone, there was written a word gUnless. g and he the idea that the Once-ler leads with the boy is that unless people care a lot, really really whole lot and a whole awful lot I think is the word they use in the story, umm this is whatfs going to happen. And itfs obviously a story about ah whatfs happening to our natural world, and this was written about fifty years ago. And at a time when people were beginning to understand what the environmental movement was about and it was not a happy story, and I donft remember,course I remember being charmed by the pictures and charmed by the beautiful way in which it was written but I also understood that it was an important story. And ah I I liked the story, I liked the way it was drawn, I like the way it was told, and I think I understood even when was seven or eight that it was a very very important story. Maybe my parents helped me to understand that. Ah but Thatfs it. I understand also that this ah story has been made into a movie. And Ifve not seen the movie but ah I believe that itfs an animated movie by Dreamworks or one of those large animated companies. And that is the story, very shortly, not very beautifully told, but of the Lorax. Iikana?