Dr. Seuss

Hello there! My name might sound a bit formal, Theodor Seuss Geisel, but I bet you know me by another name, Dr. Seuss. I'm the fellow who dreamed up the Cat in the Hat and the Grinch, and I want to tell you my story. It all began in a wonderful town called Springfield, Massachusetts, where I was born on March 2nd, 1904. The world was a different place back then, with horse-drawn carts still sharing the streets with the first sputtering automobiles. My family was proudly German-American, and our home on Fairfield Street was always buzzing with activity and laughter. My father, Theodor Robert Geisel, was a strong and kind man who had a job that I considered the best in the world. He eventually became the superintendent of the city's parks, which included the Forest Park Zoo. As a boy, he would take me there, and my mind would race with excitement. I saw elephants with wrinkly knees, ostriches with long, wobbly necks, and all sorts of peculiar animals. I didn't just see animals; I saw characters. I would rush home with these images swirling in my head, grab a pencil, and start sketching. My bedroom walls became my canvas, covered in drawings of wild, imaginary beasts that no zoo had ever seen. I drew creatures with extra legs, horns in strange places, and expressions that told a story. My mother, Henrietta, had her own special magic. She didn't draw with pencils, but with words. She had a wonderful, rhythmic way of speaking. Every night, she would lull my sister Marnie and me to sleep not with traditional stories, but with chants and rhymes she remembered from her childhood. Her family had owned a bakery, and she would recite the names of the pies in a rhythmic, sing-song way: 'Apple, mince, lemon…' These silly, soothing sounds planted the first seeds of rhyme in my mind. The rhythm of her voice became the rhythm of my thoughts, and soon, I found that I loved playing with words just as much as I loved drawing my peculiar creatures. It was the perfect start for a boy with a big imagination.

As I grew older, I carried that love for drawing and wordplay with me like a favorite book. After finishing high school, I packed my bags in 1921 and headed to Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. College was a whole new world, a place of learning and new friendships, and I quickly found my home at the campus humor magazine, the 'Dartmouth Jack-O-Lantern.' I discovered that I loved making people laugh more than almost anything. I filled the magazine with my cartoons and funny articles, and eventually, I became the editor-in-chief. However, I got into a bit of trouble with the school administration over a party and was told I couldn't publish under my own name anymore. That setback turned into a strange sort of opportunity. I didn't want to stop creating, so I decided to use my middle name, 'Seuss,' as my pen name for the very first time. It felt a bit sneaky and a lot of fun, and it was the first step toward becoming the Dr. Seuss the world would come to know. After graduating from Dartmouth in 1925, I felt the pressure to pursue a more traditional career. I thought I should become a serious professor, so I sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to study English literature at Oxford University in England. Oxford was steeped in history, with ancient stone buildings and very serious students. I tried my best to pay attention in lectures about Shakespeare, but I found my mind wandering and my hands doodling strange creatures in the margins of my notebooks. One day, a bright and wonderful young woman in my class named Helen Palmer peeked at my drawings. Instead of telling me to focus, she saw something special in my silly, flying cow. She leaned over and said, 'You're crazy to be a professor. What you really want to do is draw.' Her words were like a key unlocking a door I didn't even realize was closed. She was right! Helen's belief in my art changed my life. We fell in love, and in 1927, we got married and moved back to the United States. I decided to forget about being a professor and try to make a living as an artist. It wasn't easy at first. To pay the bills, I drew cartoons for magazines like 'The Saturday Evening Post' and created advertisements for a popular bug spray called Flit. For seventeen years, I drew ads featuring my wacky creatures and the slogan, 'Quick, Henry, the Flit!'. This work wasn't writing children's books, but it taught me how to combine words and pictures to grab people's attention and tell a quick story. It helped me perfect my unique, wiggly, and wonderful drawing style that you see in my books today.

My advertising work was fun, but my heart truly wanted to create stories for children. One day, while on a long ocean voyage back from Europe in 1936, the rhythmic chugging of the ship's engine got stuck in my head. Chug-chug, chug-chug. The rhythm turned into words: 'And to think that I saw it on Mulberry Street.' That phrase became the seed for my very first children's book. I wrote and illustrated a story about a boy named Marco who lets his imagination run wild. I was so proud of it, but getting it published was a huge challenge. I submitted it to publisher after publisher, and each one sent it back. One said it was too silly, another said the rhymes were strange. I received 27 rejection letters! I was walking home one day, ready to give up and burn the manuscript, when I bumped into an old friend from college, Mike McClintock. It turned out he had just started a job as a children's book editor that very morning! He took a look, loved it, and in 1937, 'And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street' was finally published. The real turning point in my career, however, came almost twenty years later. In the 1950s, people were worried that children weren't learning to read because their books were too boring. An editor from a publishing house challenged me to write a book for new readers that was exciting and fun, but there was a catch. I could only use a specific list of 236 simple words. It was like trying to build a castle with only a handful of blocks. I stared at that list for months, feeling frustrated. I was about to give up when I decided to find the first two words on the list that rhymed and build a story from there. Those words were 'cat' and 'hat.' Suddenly, an image popped into my mind: a mischievous cat in a tall, red-and-white striped hat! 'The Cat in the Hat,' published in 1957, was a smash hit and proved that learning to read could be an adventure. After that, the ideas kept flowing. I wrote 'How the Grinch Stole Christmas!' in 1957, exploring how the spirit of giving is more important than presents. And then came another challenge from a publisher who bet me I couldn't write a book using only 50 different words. I won that bet with 'Green Eggs and Ham' in 1960, a book that has encouraged picky eaters to try new things for decades.

Looking back, I see that my books were always more than just silly rhymes and funny pictures. I wanted to whisper important ideas to my readers. In 'Horton Hears a Who!', I wanted you to know that 'a person's a person, no matter how small,' a message about kindness and respecting everyone. In 'The Lorax,' I shared my worries about our planet and the importance of taking care of our environment. My greatest joy was creating worlds where anything could happen, where you could meet a Sneetch, a Zax, or a Grickle-grass. I hoped these stories would spark your imagination and make you feel that you could do anything, too. My life was a long and wonderful journey filled with doodles, rhymes, and countless characters. It came to a peaceful end on September 24th, 1991, but I like to think my story isn't really over. I left behind a world of books, and my hope is that they continue to make you laugh, to make you think, and most importantly, to inspire you to read. So, pick up a book, let your mind wander, and always remember to be wonderfully and uniquely you.