Theodor Seuss Geisel

Dr. Seuss (featurewriter1.tripod.com)

Theodor Seuss wrote 47 books for children and adults during his career of being an author. I wanted to learn more about Dr. Seuss so I did research on Theodor Seuss Geisel in “Biography Today”. He accomplished many things while he was alive.

Theodor Seuss Geisel, known to millions as Dr. Seuss, was born on March 2, 1904. He was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, to Theodor Robert and Henrietta Seuss Geisel.

Horton Hears a Who (flickdirect.com)

Theodor Geisel attended many schools all over the world. Seuss went to public schools in Springfield. He was an early and avid reader. He read some the works of Jonathon Swift, Charles Dickens, and Robert Louis Stevenson. He loved to draw, but was discouraged by his first art teacher in high school, who told him he would never learn how. After high school he attended Dartmouth College where he majored in English. He became editor of the campus humor magazine, Jack-O'-Lantern, which published his early illustrations and stories. After Dartmouth, Seuss continued to study at Lincoln College, part of Oxford University in England, and at the University of the Sorbonne in Paris.

In the late 1920’s, Seuss and his wife returned to the United States, and he began writing and illustrating ads for a variety of products. In 1936, he began And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street. But even this part of his career path was not easy: the book was rejected by twenty-nine publishers before it was finally published, in 1937, by Vanguard Press. It was immediately successful, and the characteristic Seuss style, with its unique rhyme pattern and illustrations, was born. Seuss claimed that the pattern of the verse was influenced by the rhythmic clang of the engines on the ocean liner he was riding when the book idea first came to him. In a 1954 article of Life magazine, the author and educator John Hersey made the suggestion that Seuss try to develop a reader for the young. The suggestion was inspired: Seuss got the list of words used in primers, chose 220 of them, and wrote The Cat in the Hat, surely the most famous reader of all time. Seuss started a new publishing house, beginner Books (later part of Random House), which he headed until his death. This company published such Seuss favorites as Hop on Pop and Green Eggs and Ham, the best-selling children's book of all time.

Theodor Seuss Geisel, also known to many children and adults as Dr. Seuss, was very successful in many things. Even though he was told he would never learn how to draw, after being discouraged by his art teacher, he still attended schools to make his dream come true. He wrote many books for children and even adults. He was also writing ads for a variety of products. Also, he wrote humorous articles for magazines like Vanity Fair, Liberty, and Judge, but it was an ad for insect spray with the line: ' Quick, Henry, the Flit!" that first brought him recognition as a writer.