Theodor S. Geisel a.k.a. Dr. Seuss - Details

Biography

THEODOR S. GEISEL A.K.A. DR. SEUSS always would say, a person’s a person no matter how small. Children want the same things we want; to laugh, to be challenged, to be entertained and delighted.

Brilliant, playful and always respectful of children, Dr. Seuss charmed his way into the consciousness of four generations of youngsters and parents and in the process taught a lot of youngsters to read over the course of 44 books beginning in 1937.
Dr. Seuss was born Theodor Seuss Geisel in 1904 and graduated from Dartmouth College where his predecessor of the school humor magazine was Norman Maclean (who in 1976 authored A River Runs Through It). After a stint at Oxford University, he began a career in advertising which led to a series for Judge magazine, The Boids and Beasties, which was a precursor to the strangely shaped silly animals that evolved into the Whos, Zooks and Loraxes of later stories.

Geisel signed his early drawings Dr. Theophrastus Seuss to lend a scientific cache to his goofy zoology. It evolved to become simply Dr. Seuss (his mother’s maiden name) with his first book, And To Think I Saw It on Mulberry Street in 1937.
His 44 cleverly written and illustrated books include such classics as Green Eggs and Ham, Horton Hatches The Egg, The Cat in The Hat and How The Grinch Stole Christmas and always embodied the spirit of modern living; mirroring our strengths, weakness, desires and fears. Never preachy, the books still imbued important moral lessons for children and adults all the while being endlessly entertaining.

The creation of The Cat In The Hat proved to be a landmark in the evolution of children’s literature in the late 1950s. At the time, the popular novelist John Hersey had characterized school primers and antiseptic, pallid, uniform and bland. At the time a best-selling critique of children’s literacy was entitled Why Johnny Can’t Read. An educational publisher challenged Dr. Seuss to write a reading primer using a vocabulary of only 225 words that would still captivate young readers. The result was The Cat In The Hat which sold a million copies.
Dr. Seuss was granted doctorates in literature and fine arts by seven universities and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1984. Although he died in 1991 he continues to be the world’s best selling children’s book author, having sold over 250 million books.

Events

  • 2nd March 1904 - Birth
  • 24th September 1991 - Death