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Dr.
Seuss:
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Theodor
Seuss Geisel, better known to the world as the beloved
Dr. Seuss, was born in 1904 on Howard Street in
Springfield, Massachusetts. Ted's father, Theodor
Robert, and grandfather were brewmasters 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.
Although the Geisels enjoyed great financial success for
many years, the onset of World War I and Prohibition
presented both financial and social challenges for the
German immigrants. Nonetheless, the family persevered
and again prospered, providing Ted and his sister,
Marnie, with happy childhoods.
The influence of Ted's memories of Springfield can be
seen 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 "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. |
