Dr. Seuss (1904-1991)

Author, illustrator, editor, and publisher, Dr. Seuss revolutionized materials directed at young readers by introducing humorous, rhymed, and colorful books using limited vocabularies and simple, appealing illustrations. Uniquely inventive in the annals of twentieth-century children's books, Seuss openly acknowledged that helping to kill off the predictable "Dick and Jane" primers of the 1950s was one of his proudest accomplishments. The bizarre creatures of his stories, which contained subtle moral messages that could be read on different levels, often acted with what their author termed "logical insanity." For example, if an animal had two heads, he must also have two toothbrushes.

Twice-married but childless, Seuss had not started out to be a children's book innovator. He was born Theodor Seuss Geisel in Springfield, Massachusetts, the son of a German immigrant who ran a brewery until the arrival of Prohibition. He later commented that his father was on track to become company president until circumstances forced him to switch his careers and become commissioner of parks. This helped instill an early cynicism in the future Dr. Seuss, while his frequent trips to the zoo thereafter helped to stimulate his fertile imagination.

His mother, Henrietta Seuss Geisel, unwittingly lent him her maiden name, which he first used when writing a humorous scientific piece. While reading for a B.A. in English from Dartmouth, Seuss contributed to the school humor magazine, Jack O'Lantern, then studied literature for one year at Oxford. Returning to the United States in 1927, Seuss sold cartoons to the Saturday Evening Post, Judge, and Vanity Fair. He always considered himself to be an artist first and an author second. This belief received some confirmation in many of his books for which he initially drew sketches, afterwards devising dialogue to accompany them. When he later wrote books without illustrating them himself, Seuss used the pseudonym Theo LeSieg (Geisel spelled backwards.)

Seuss composed advertising illustrations for Standard Oil of New Jersey for 15 years after a company executive saw his cartoon of a knight trying to kill dragons with the insecticide Flit. This led to one of the 1930s most famous ad slogans, "Quick, Henry, the Flit. " In 1932, Seuss wrote an ABC book for children but could not find a publisher. In 1936, while crossing the Atlantic by ship, he composed And to Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street in rhyme inspired by the rhythm of the vessel's engines. About a boy whose imagination transformed a horse and wagon into various beasts, the book became his first published monograph, bought by Vanguard Press after some 20 other publishing houses had turned it down.

Vanguard also published his next book, The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins, in 1938. Seuss then moved on to Random House, where he remained for the rest of his life, founding its Beginner Books division in 1958. The year 1939 witnessed both The King's Stilts and Seuss's only novel, The Seven Lady Godivas, a commercial failure and one of only two books he wrote for adults. From 1940 to 1942, he worked as a political cartoonist for the anti-isolationist PM newspaper, revealing both his political concerns and his preference for drawing. The perennial favorite Horton Hatches the Egg appeared in 1940. Critics variously regard this first Horton book as a parable about the virtue of intervening in crises, about protecting unborn life, about perseverance and integrity, or as just an amusing story.

During a stint in the army Seuss worked with Warner Brothers cartoonist Chuck Jones (who later brought How the Grinch Stole Christmas to television) on training films. He also collaborated on documentaries in the Army Signal Corps with film director Frank Capra, from whom he learned the importance of plot development, and one could argue that the triumph of physically weak protagonists and the essential goodness that Seuss saw in most people reflect a Capraesque sensibility. Seuss garnered three Academy Awards in his lifetime: for two documentaries, Hitler Lives (1946) and Design for Death (1947, about the Japanese people), and for his animated cartoon Gerald McBoing-Boing (1951).

His postwar book production continued with McElligot's Pool (1947), Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose (1948), Bartholomew and the Oobleck (1949), If I Ran the Zoo (1950), Scrambled Eggs Super! (1953), Horton Hears a Who (1954), On Beyond Zebra (1955), If I Ran the Circus (1956), and How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1957). But the debut of The Cat in the Hat in 1957 was the event that established Seuss's reputation. Produced as a supplementary first-grade reader with a controlled vocabulary of 223 words, it was the tale of a mischief-maker who teaches children to misbehave while their mother is away. Its success allowed Seuss to establish Beginner Books.

According to E. J. Kahn, Jr., writing in a December 1960 issue of The New Yorker, Geisel was a perfectionist. He often labored more than a year on a book and threw away 99 percent of his material before he was satisfied, afterwards haunting the production department to ensure that it got his material right. Geisel later observed that his favorite book was The Lorax (1971), which came almost effortlessly to him, allegedly taking only 45 minutes to compose. This environmentally conscious allegory about trees so loved that they are all cut down and become extinct, was also the only one of his books that anyone ever tried to ban. That effort occurred in 1989 in the northern California logging town of Laytonville. Other direct message books such as Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories (1958), about a deceitful leader, and The Sneetches and Other Stories (1961), about a hateful competition between two kinds of creatures, had received uniformly welcome responses.

The characters in the Dr. Seuss books often encounter fearful situations, but wit and good luck see them through. Even the baddies are not irredeemably evil. The Grinch, for example, who starts out with a heart two sizes too small, ends up with one three sizes bigger than before. Seuss's trademarks are nonsense, humor, mischief, galloping rhymes, and tongue twisters. Some of his words are his own inventions; others, such as "burp," had never before been used in children's books. His illustrations—gangling cartoon-style figures, generally depicted in simple primary colors—are of ordinary characters with which children readily identify. All of his people look very much alike, which perhaps is part of the message. The lead characters are also invariably male, if they can be identified by gender at all. The novelist Alison Lurie asserted in the New York Review of Books in 1990 that there was an inherent sexism in his characters' roles. One book with a female protagonist, however, Daisy-Head Mayzie (1995), was published posthumously. Seuss's focus on the issues of aging, tolerance, laziness, individuality, and persistence were usually subtly intertwined in his stories.

In a career that spanned six decades, Dr. Seuss published 48 books, including his second for adults, this time the successful You're Only Old Once: A Book for Obsolete Children (1986). They sold 100 million copies in 18 languages. According to Publishers' Weekly in 1996, of the top 10 bestselling children's books of all time, Seuss wrote three: The Cat in The Hat, Green Eggs and Ham (1960, written in response to a challenge from publisher Bennett Cerf to write a book using 50 words or less), and One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish (1960). Many others of his works were not far behind in popularity.

The last of Seuss's books to be published in his lifetime, Oh, the Places You'll Go! (1990), addressed the highs and lows of human experience—facing fear, loneliness, and confusion—and fittingly appealed to both adults and children. With its presence on the New York Times adult best-seller list for two years (1990-92), its author could say: "I no longer write for children, I write for people!" Older readers could appreciate the satire, younger readers the charm. In the end, Seuss's hegemony was challenged by lushly illustrated and more pragmatic books with more direct messages, but his books have retained their popularity.

Fensch, Thomas, editor. Of Sneetches and Whos and the Good Dr. Seuss: Essays on the Writings and Life of Theodor Geisel. London, McFarland & Company, 1997.

Lurie, Alison. "The Cabinet of Dr. Seuss." The New York Review of Books. December 20, 1990.

Martin, Patricia Stone. Dr. Seuss: We Love You. Vero Beach, Florida, Rourke Enterprises, 1987.

Morgan, Judith, and Neil Morgan. Dr. Seuss & Mr. Geisel. New York, Random House, 1995.

Wheeler, Jill C. Dr. Seuss. Edina, Minnesota, Abdo & Daughters, 1992.