Daily News

Parade on June 3 to Celebrate Opening of Dr. Seuss Museum

SPRINGFIELD — Red and white pom-poms will be waving as the Springfield Museums celebrate the grand opening of the Amazing World of Dr. Seuss Museum — the first and only museum dedicated to beloved children’s book author and Springfield native Theodore Geisel — with a parade on Saturday, June 3, from 9 to 10 a.m.

The Cavalcade of Conveyances parade will start down the famed Mulberry Street at 9 a.m., and continue right onto Maple Street to Chestnut Street. The giant Cat in the Hat balloon will stay in Merrick Park while the parade continues up Chestnut to enter the Quadrangle at the Yertle the Turtle gate at about 10 a.m.

In addition to the giant Cat in the Hat balloon, the parade will incorporate a variety of vintage cars (including the Picknelly Rolls-Royce), the PVTA trolley, a fire engine, and the Peter Pan double-decker bus. This cavalcade of conveyances will carry dignitaries including the Cat in the Hat and Thing 1 and Thing 2.

As the Community Music School’s bucket drummers set the beat, a number of groups will be among the marchers bringing the Cat in the Hat home, including Community Music School, Milton Bradley School, Homer School, Springfield College, Greater Springfield Convention and Visitors Bureau, Springfield Library, Link to Libraries, Reading Success by 4th Grade, Springfield Thunderbirds, Valley Blue Sox, UMass Center at Springfield, and Yankee Candle.

The parade will end with a ceremonial ribbon cutting. The parade and opening ceremonies are free and open to the public. Tickets are required for the Amazing World of Dr. Seuss Museum.

The first floor of the new museum features family-friendly, interactive exhibits exploring Dr. Seuss’s Springfield roots and providing opportunities to experiment with new sounds and vocabulary, play rhyming games, and invent stories. The second floor recreates Geisel’s studio and living room (with the furniture and art materials he actually used) and features never-before publicly displayed art, family photographs and letters, and the original Geisel Grove sign which used to hang in Forest Park.