DR SEUSS LIFE

THE E MAGAZINE

Special edition
magazine
Pauls
Inventions

DR SEUSS LIFE
Dr. Seuss is a world recognized writer, his complete name is Theodor Seuss
Geisel, better known by the world as the beloved Dr. Seuss; he was born in 1904
on Howard Street in Springfield, Massachusetts. His father Theodor Robert, and
grandfather were brew masters in the city. His mother, Henrietta Seuss Geisel,
often soothed her children to sleep by "chanting" rhymes remembered from her
youth. Ted credited his mother with both his ability and desire to create the rhymes
for which he became so well known.
The Geisels
situation
financial

had a good financial success; despite of this the

of World War I and the Prohibition presented both
and social challenges for the German immigrants.
Nonetheless, the family persevered and again
prospered, providing Ted and his sister, Marnie
happy childhoods.

The
seen

influence of Ted's memories of Springfield can be

throughout his work. Drawings of Horton the
Elephant meandering along streams in the Jungle of
Nool for
example, mirror the watercourses in Springfield's
Forest
Park from the period. The fanciful truck driven by
Sylvester McMonkey McBean in The Sneetches could
well be the Knox tractor that young Ted saw on the streets of Springfield. In
addition to its name, Ted's first children's book, And To Think That I Saw It On
Mulberry Street, is filled with Springfield imagery, including a look-alike of Mayor
Fordis Parker on the reviewing stand, and police officers riding red motorcycles:
the traditional color of Springfield's famed Indian Motocycles.
Ted left Springfield as a teenager to attend Dartmouth College, where he became
editor-in-chief of the Jack-O-Lantern, Dartmouth's humor
magazine. Although his tenure as editor ended prematurely
when
Ted and his friends were caught throwing a drinking party,
which was against the prohibition laws and school policy,
he continued to contribute to the magazine, signing his
work "Seuss." This is the first record of The Cat in the
Hatthe "Seuss" pseudonym, which was both Ted's
middle name and his mother's maiden name.
To please his father, who wanted him to be a college
professor, Ted went on to Oxford University in England after graduation. However,
his academic studies bored him, and he decided to tour Europe instead. Oxford did
provide him the opportunity to meet a classmate, Helen Palmer, who not only
became his first wife, but also a children's author and book editor.
After returning to the United States, Ted began to pursue a career as a cartoonist.
The Saturday Evening Post and other publications published some of his early

pieces, but the bulk of Ted's activity during his early career was devoted to creating
advertising campaigns for Standard Oil, which he did for more than 15 years.
As World War II approached, Ted's focus shifted, and he began contributing weekly
political cartoons to PM magazine, a liberal publication. Too old for the draft, but
wanting to contribute to the war effort, Ted served with Frank Capra's Signal Corps
(U.S. Army) making training movies. It was here that he was introduced to the art of
animation and developed a series of animated training films featuring a trainee
called Private Snafu.
While Ted was continuing to contribute to Life, Vanity Fair, Judge and other
magazines, Viking Press offered him a contract to illustrate a collection of
children's sayings called Boners. Although the book was not a commercial
success, the illustrations received great reviews, providing Ted with his first "big
break" into children's literature. Getting the first book that he both wrote and
illustrated, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, published, however,
required a great degree of persistence - it was rejected 27 times before being
published by Vanguard Press.
The Cat in the Hat, perhaps the defining book of Ted's career, developed as part of
a unique joint venture between Houghton Mifflin (Vanguard Press) and Random
House. Houghton Mifflin asked Ted to write and illustrate a children's primer using
only 225 "new-reader" vocabulary words. Because he was under contract to
Random House, Random House obtained the trade publication rights, and
Houghton Mifflin kept the school rights. With the release of The Cat in the Hat, Ted
became the definitive children's book author and illustrator.
After Ted's first wife died in 1967, Ted married an old friend, Audrey Stone Geisel,
who
not
only
influenced his later books, but now guards his
legacy as the president of Dr. Seuss
Enterprises.
At the time of his death on
September 24, 1991, Ted had
written and illustrated 44
children's books, including
such
all-time favorites as Green
Eggs and Ham, Oh, the Places You'll Go, Fox in Socks, and How the Grinch Stole
Christmas. His books had been translated into more than 15 languages. Over 200
million copies had found their way into homes and hearts around the world.
Besides the books, his works have provided the source for eleven children's
television specials, a Broadway musical and a feature-length motion picture. Other
major motion pictures are on the way.
His honors included two Academy awards, two Emmy awards, a Peabody award
and the Pulitzer Prize.

10 STORIES BEHIND DR SEUSS STORIES

1. In case you haven't read "The Lorax," it's widely recognized as Dr. Seuss' take
on environmentalism and how humans are destroying nature. Loggers were so
upset about the book that some groups within the industry sponsored "The Truax,"
a similar book -- but from the logging point of view.
Another interesting fact: the book used to contain the line, "I hear things are just as
bad up in Lake Erie," but 14 years after the book was published, the Ohio Sea
Grant Program wrote to Seuss creator Theodore Geisel, and told him how much
the conditions had improved and implored him to take the line out. Geisel agreed
and said that it wouldn't be in future editions.
2. Somehow, Geisel's books find themselves in the middle of controversy. The line
"A person's a person, no matter how small," from "Horton Hears a Who!," has been
used as a slogan for anti-abortion organizations. It's often questioned whether that
was Seuss' intent in the first place, but when he was still alive, he threatened to
sue an anti-abortion group unless they removed his words from their letterhead.
Karl ZoBell, the attorney for Dr. Seuss' interests and for his widow, Audrey Geisel,
says that she doesn't like people to "hijack Dr. Seuss characters or material to front
their own points of view."
3. "If I Ran the Zoo," published in 1950, is the first recorded instance of the word
"nerd."
4. "The Cat in the Hat" was written because Dr. Seuss thought the famous Dick
and Jane primers were insanely boring. Because kids weren't interested in the
material, they weren't exactly compelled to use it repeatedly in their efforts to learn
to read. So, "The Cat in the Hat" was born.
5. Bennett Cerf, Dr. Seuss' editor, bet him that he couldn't write a book using 50
words or less. "The Cat in the Hat" was pretty simple, after all, and it used 225
words. Not one to back down from a challenge, Mr. Geisel started writing and came
up with "Green Eggs and Ham" -- which uses exactly 50 words.
The 50 words are: by the way, are: a, am, and, anywhere, are, be, boat, box, car,
could, dark, do, eat, eggs, fox, goat, good, green, ham, here, house, I, if, in, let,
like, may, me, mouse, not, on, or, rain, Sam, say, see, so, thank, that, the, them,
there, they, train, tree, try, will, with, would, you.

6. It's often alleged that "Marvin K. Mooney

Will You Please Go Now!" was written
specifically about Richard Nixon, but the
book came out only two months after the
whole Watergate scandal. It's unlikely that
the book could have been conceived of,
written, edited and mass-produced in such a
short time.
Also, Seuss never admitted that the story
was originally about Nixon. That's not to say
he didn't understand how well the two flowed
together. In 1974, he sent a copy of Marvin
K. Mooney to his friend Art Buchwald at the
Washington Post. In it, he crossed out
"Marvin K. Mooney" and replaced it with
"Richard M. Nixon," which Buchwald
reprinted in its entirety.
7. "Yertle the Turtle" = Hitler? Yep. If you
haven't read the story, here's a little overview:
Yertle is the king of the pond, but he wants more. He demands that other turtles
stack themselves up so he can sit on top of them to survey the land. Mack, the
turtle at the bottom, is exhausted. He asks Yertle for a rest; Yertle ignores him and
demands more turtles for a better view.
Eventually, Yertle notices the moon and is furious that anything dare be higher than
himself, and is about ready to call for more turtles when Mack burps. This sudden
movement topples the whole stack, sends Yertle flying into the mud, and frees the
rest of the turtles from their stacking duty.
Dr. Seuss actually said Yertle was a representation of Hitler. Despite the political
nature of the book, none of that was disputed at Random House -- what was
disputed was Mack's burp. No one had ever let a burp loose in a children's book
before, so it was a little dicey. In the end, obviously, Mack burped. Mental Floss:
The Dr. Seuss quiz
8. "The Butter Battle Book" is one I had never heard of, perhaps with good reason:
it was pulled from the shelves of libraries for a while because of the reference to
the Cold War and the arms race.
Yooks and Zooks are societies who do everything differently. The Yooks eat their
bread with the butter-side up and the Zooks eat their bread with the butter-side
down. Obviously, one of them must be wrong, so they start building weapons to
outdo each other: the "Tough-Tufted Prickly Snick-Berry Switch," the "Triple-Sling
Jigger," the "Jigger-Rock Snatchem," the "Kick-A-Poo Kid", the "Eight-Nozzled
Elephant-Toted Boom Blitz," the "Utterly Sputter" and the "Bitsy Big-Boy
Boomeroo."
The book concludes with each side ready to drop their ultimate bombs on each
other, but the reader doesn't know how it actually turns out.
9. "Oh The Places You'll Go" is the final Seuss book published before he passed
away. Published in 1990, it sells about 300,000 copies every year because so
many people give it to college and high school grads.

10. No Dr. Seuss post would be complete without a mention of "How the Grinch
Stole Christmas!" Frankenstein's Monster himself, Boris Karloff, provided the voice
of the Grinch and the narration for the movie. Seuss was a little wary of casting him
because he thought his voice would be too scary for kids. If you're wondering why
they sound a bit different, it's because the sound people went back to the Grinch's
parts and removed all of the high tones in Karloff's voice. That's why the Grinch
sounds so gravelly.
Tony the Tiger, AKA Thurl Ravenscroft, is the voice behind "You're a Mean One, Mr.
Grinch." He received no credit on screen, so Dr. Seuss wrote to columnists in every
major U.S. newspaper to tell them exactly who had sung the song.
'Lost' Dr Seuss stories to be published
The four obscure stories include early incarnations of favourites The Grinch and
Horton, which will come out in a picture book for the first time.
They were originally printed in a 1950s US magazine, which was often discarded
when the next monthly issue came out.
US writer Seuss wrote a series of well-loved books including The Cat in the Hat
and Green Eggs and Ham.
Theodor Seuss Geisel - created a string of imaginative characters and wrote tales
in an infectious rhyming style.
He died in 1991 at the age of 87 after publishing 43 titles during his career.
The new compilation of four stories, called Horton and the Kwuggerbug and More
Lost Stories, shows the helpful, friendly elephant of the title duped into carrying an
insect for the promise of a tasty beezlenut tree - which turns out to be out of reach.
The Grinch, universally known for stealing Christmas, is equally devious in his
1955 appearance, convincing a creature called the hoobub to buy a piece of green
string that he says is more valuable than the sun.
Seuss publishers Random House Books for Young
Readers, said the revived stories would have "a colour
palette enhanced beyond that of the magazines in which
the stories originally appeared".
The book will enable fans to "learn more about Horton's
integrity and a devious Grinch," they added.
Jim Carrey brought The Grinch to life on the big screen
It follows a collection of similarly "lost" Dr Seuss stories
which was published in 2011.
Seuss expert Charles D Cohen, who writes an
introduction to the new book, called The New
stories"fresh encounters with old friends and familiar places", added that their
original publication in Redbook Magazine in the 1950s had led them to be "largely
forgotten".

Dr Seuss's work has been successfully transferred to the big screen, with his
friendly elephant appearing in Horton Hears a Who! and the grumpy Grinch being
brought to life by Hollywood star Jim Carrey.
9 Facts to Know About the Famed Author
While many of us know him through the lens of his beloved characters, there was
much more to Geisel than his drawings and rhymes. Below, there are a few things
you may not have known about good ol Dr. Seuss:

Geisel started using the pen name Dr. Seuss after he was forced to resign from his
post as editor-in-chief of the Dartmouth humor magazine, Jack-O-Lantern. He was
caught throwing a party and drinking gin with his friends in his room, and because
this was back during Prohibition, he had to pay the price. He managed to keep
writing for the magazine, but under the pseudonym Seuss, which was his
mothers maiden name. He started using Dr. Seuss after he graduated college, as
a consolation to his father for never pursuing medicine.
The Cat in the Hat author originally said the correct pronunciation of Seuss
rhymes with voice. He later changed it to rhyme with goose, as it was how most
people pronounced it.
Geisel also wrote under the pen names Theo LeSieg and Rosetta Stone.
He is said to have coined the word nerd. According to TheFW.com, the first
recorded instance of the word nerd is in Seuss 1950 book, If I Ran the Zoo.
Before he started writing childrens books, Geisel was an ad man, creating satirical
advertisements for General Electric, Standard Oil, NBC, and others. He was also a
World War II political cartoonist, and joined the Army as a Captain, making
educational and propaganda films. Two documentary films based on works he
created (Hitler Lives? and Design for Death) won Academy Awards.
Dr. Seuss practiced what he preached: his first book, And to Think I Saw It on
Mulberry Street, was rejected by 27 different publishers before it finally got picked
up. Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can
think up if only you try! Seuss once wrote. Try, try, try again, he did.
Though he knows how to write for children and their wild imaginations, he never
had kids of his own. You make em, I amuse em, he once said. His wife said in
an interview once that he couldnt just sit down on the floor and play with them,
and was always a bit uncomfortable and afraid around them.
He had a bit of a dirty mouth, and would try to sneak in some PG-13 language into
his works. The first version of Hop on Pop that was sent to his publisher included
the word contraceptive in one of the verses.
Geisel considered his greatest achievement to be killing off the Dick and Jane
books, which he said werent challenging enough for children, and were boring. Dr.
Seuss books became the new standard in childrens publishingexpanding the
imagination through brilliant illustration, social issues, and clever rhymes and
vocabulary.
THE CAT IN THE HAT

The Cat in the Hat, the book about a mischievous, irrepressible soul who always
seemed kind of ageless, is 50 years old. At the time of its debut in 1957, the Cat
was an instant success. The Dr. Seuss classic is still captivating to children and the
adults who read to them.
It has everything a classic needs a great plot, great characters, wonderful
illustrations and a unique voice, says Anita Silvey, author of 100 Best Books for
Children.
"Some books we read and we forget them right away," she says. "But there are
those other books, that they just stay with us. And The Cat in the Hat is that kind of
book."
And
that
there's a pretty
On a cold,
up on a
year-old
from one
Cohen
Dio,

means if you grew up reading The Cat in the Hat,

good chance your children will read it, too.
snowy, winter afternoon, Sonya Cohen curled
living room couch to listen to her children, 9Dio and 6-year-old Gabel read
of her favorite childhood books.
began reading the book to her
children while they were much younger.
now a proficient reader, says she can
remember sounding out the words to
The Cat in the Hat when she was first

learning to read .
"I liked the rhythm and the choice of words because they were not too easy and not
too hard," she says.
In fact, the words to The Cat in the Hat were drawn from a vocabulary list for 6and 7-year-olds. The list was given to Theodor Geisel, best known as Dr. Seuss, by
William Spaulding, then the director of Houghton Mifflin's educational division.
According to Philip Nel, author of The Annotated Cat, Spaulding had seen a 1954
Life magazine article by the writer John Hersey. In that article, Hersey took on a
problem that was bothering Americans at the time: Why Johnny can't read. Hersey
concluded that the "Dick and Jane" readers that most schools used were just too
boring. Hersey suggested that Dr. Seuss write a new reading primer for the nation's
schoolchildren.
Nel says that Spaulding liked that idea and issued a challenge to Dr. Seuss.
"He said, 'Write me a story that first-graders can't put down.' And so Seuss did and
he wrote The Cat in the Hat to replace Dick and Jane. And it was a huge hit. It was

a huge commercial success from the moment of its publication. It really is the book
that made Dr. Seuss, Dr. Seuss," Nel says.
Dr. Seuss had been a fairly successful children's book author up until then, though
he was not yet a household name. He thought it would be easy to write the book
Spaulding wanted, and expected to dash it off in no time. It took him a year and a
half. Seuss underestimated how hard it would be to write a book using just over
200 words, Nel says.
"Seuss was used to inventing words when he needed them, so to stick to a word
list was a huge challenge for him," Nel says. "And, in fact, his favorite story about
the creation of The Cat in the Hat is that it was born out of his frustration with the
word list. He said he would come up with an idea, but then he would have no way
to express that idea. So he said...: 'I read the list three times and almost went out
of my head. I said I'll read it once more and if I can find two words that rhyme, that
will be my book. I found cat and hat and I said the title will be The Cat in the Hat.'"
In the end, Nel says, Seuss used exactly 236 words to write The Cat in the Hat,
words that young readers can understand.
But if the words are important, so too are the characters and situations that Seuss
created: An outrageous cat and two strange things creating havoc on a rainy day.
And perhaps the most controversial character: the scolding goldfish who warns of
dire consequences.
The secret to Dr. Seuss' success may be his ability to zero in on what kids like and,
Nel says, his ability to create a character like the cat who embodies that.
"He breaks the rules and gets away with it. He's a lot of fun. He creates chaos and
creates excitement, and relieves the boredom of a rainy day. And in the end,
everything's cleaned up, mother comes home and is none the wiser."

DR SEUSS

Trs apprci et considr comme une icne en son temps aux USA
principalement, il publia plus de 60 livres pour enfants, souvent
caractriss par leurs personnages originaux, leurs rimes et l'utilisation
frquente des mtres trisyllabiques.

Parmi ses livres les plus renomms, on retrouve des classiques tels
que Le Chat chapeaut (The Cat in the Hat), Le Grincheux qui voulait
gcher Nol (How the grinch stole Christmas) ou encore Horton hears
a Who!. Il a particip l'criture des scnarios des dessins anims de
Private Snafu.
Ses uvres donnrent lieu onze adaptations la tlvision, cinq au
cinma et une sous forme de comdie musicale Broadway.
Seuss travailla comme illustrateur pour des campagnes publicitaires, et
comme dessinateur de presse pour PM, un magazine new yorkais.
Durant la Seconde Guerre mondiale, il intgra l'arme pour travailler
dans le dpartement de l'animation de l'US Air Force ; il y crivit le
scnario de Design for Death, un film qui gagna en 1948 l'Oscar du
meilleur film documentaire.