For the rest of his life, Geisel would find himself served plates full of green eggs and ham at book signings and social events hosted by well-meaning friends. “Deplorable stuff,” he said later. “The worst time was on a yacht in six-foot seas.”82 Green Eggs and Ham would prove to be a sales juggernaut whose popularity carried all other Dr. Seuss books along with it. By 1960, in fact, nearly three million copies of Dr. Seuss books had been sold, with the money coming in so deep and so fast that Geisel eventually asked that any royalties beyond $5,000—that magic annual salary he had spoken with agent Phyllis Jackson about—be deferred and invested in mutual funds to reduce his rapidly growing annual tax bill.
Beginner Books as a whole were selling well, too. In addition to the two Dr. Seuss books published in 1960, there was also Benjamin Elkin and Leonard Shortall’s The King’s Wish and Other Stories and Robert Lopshire’s Put Me in the Zoo. Both sold respectably, though Business Week warned that “[s]ome librarians and store buyers say the Beginner Books trade on Dr. Seuss’ reputation and not all are up to his quality.”83 That certainly couldn’t be said of what would become one of Beginner Books’s most beloved titles, P. D. Eastman’s Are You My Mother? in which Eastman had managed to tell his story using just under a hundred unique words.
There was clearly big money to be made in writing for children. “It is a good business,” Geisel said later. “It turned good after World War II . . . everybody got out of the Army under the [GI] Bill and got married and proceeded to have seven or eight kids. That built the market.”84 Following Random House’s lead—or at least inspired by the success of The Cat in the Hat—other publishers were now establishing their own labels for children’s books, most notably the I Can Read imprint at Harper & Row, which was publishing the successful Little Bear series by Else Holmelund Minarik and illustrator Maurice Sendak.
Practically the only publisher not making any money off the new glut of children’s books was poor William Spaulding at Houghton Mifflin, who’d come up with the idea of entertaining reading primers in the first place. Spaulding had watched in frustration as Bennett Cerf’s trade edition of The Cat in the Hat far surpassed the sales of Houghton Mifflin’s textbook edition—and then saw the same thing happen with the textbook editions of The Cat in the Hat Comes Back and Yertle the Turtle. Spaulding eventually threw up his hands and sold the textbook rights for the titles back to Cerf, who quietly shelved them at Geisel’s request. Geisel wanted only “a supplementary reader that can be read for fun. I don’t want teachers assigning pupils to read two pages of it a night.”85
But Geisel also thought there was more to it than merely money. “I think something much bigger has happened,” he wrote at the time. “I think that writers have finally realized that children’s reading and children’s thinking are the rock-bottom base upon which the future of this country will rise. Or not rise.”86 For Geisel, writing for children was part patriotism, part moral calling. “In these days of tension and confusion, writers are beginning to realize that books for children have a greater potential for good, or evil, than any other form of literature on earth,” he wrote. “The proportion of fine books versus junk is growing steadily. And the children are eagerly welcoming the good writers who talk not down to them as kiddies, but talk to them clearly and honestly as equals.”87
Still, Beginner Books were selling briskly enough in their first printings—even a slow-selling title would move an impressive 30,000 copies—that by April 1960, the imprint was now earning more than a million dollars annually for Random House. “Beginner Books was getting so big, it was becoming embarrassing,” said Bennett Cerf.88 While he had been content to let the Geisels and Phyllis oversee the imprint through its start-up phase, Beginner Books now had his attention. The imprint had quickly become a viable and very profitable commodity—and one Bennett Cerf now wanted entirely under the Random House roof, especially as he was mulling over recommendations to sell the company at some point in the not-too-distant future.
The savvy Cerf decided to make a deal with the Beginner Books team using the best leverage he had. In October 1959, Cerf had taken Random House public, with individual shares valued at $11.75.89 Now, in August of 1960, after consulting with the Random House board, Cerf was prepared to swap the 100 shares of Beginner Books stock for 25,000 shares of Random House stock, now valued at around $32 per share. All total, Cerf had just laid an $800,000 offer on the table.90
Ted and Phyllis initially balked, mostly for tax reasons—but the proposition was too good not to consider seriously. The three partners would eventually accept Cerf’s offer, though—perhaps predictably—not without causing further hard feelings between the Geisels and Phyllis. While the exact terms of the agreement would never be made public, those who knew Ted—and Bennett Cerf—were certain that the publisher had further sweetened the deal for Ted, providing the Geisels with additional financial incentives, profit sharing, or stock options that Cerf didn’t make available to his own wife. “We bought Beginner Books from the three of them for a pretty penny,” Bennett Cerf reported several years later. “Phyllis is still yapping that we cheated her, but actually the three of them were very happy.”91 That was typical Cerf overstatement; the deal had served only to widen the cracks in what was now a rapidly fracturing partnership.
* * *
• • • •
When they weren’t playing businesspeople, Ted and Helen seemed, according to one journalist, “an uncommonly close and devoted couple.”92 When Helen informed Ted in 1960 that she wanted to write her own Beginner Book based on “Gustav the Goldfish”—Ted’s story of an ever-growing goldfish he had drawn for Redbook in 1950—he wrote her a charming “Dear Spouse” letter granting her permission to adapt the work. “You have the right to use any of the situations or any of the words from the original story that your little heart desires,” he wrote. “You must, however, comply with all necessary steps in protecting my original copyright. . . . Very truly yours, and I hope you will have dinner with me tonight and many nights following.”93
While Helen was more actively involved in social and community events, she could still successfully persuade Ted to join her in causes they mutually supported, such as raising funds for the foundation the Geisels had established to support the new children’s wing at the San Diego Fine Arts Museum. Ted was actively involved in helping the museum conceptualize exhibits; in 1955, he had written a proposal for a potential Dr. Seuss museum, where every exhibit would be marked with signs reading DO TOUCH. He envisioned having a printing press where kids could print their own books, or an exhibit on Venetian windows where children could learn to blow their own glass. He was hoping to bring similarly exciting, though hopefully safer, exhibits to the San Diego Fine Arts Museum.
He would attend, though rarely enjoy, the countless cocktail parties and receptions mandated by such fundraisers, where small talk and forced grins were the coin of the realm. He was “funny, intelligent, a bit shy,” recalled one La Jolla acquaintance—but such gatherings were agony for someone who still blanched at public speaking. “He would go to cocktail parties, and he would talk to you if you were there,” remembered one friend. “He would stand quietly in a corner, in his bow tie, and not make a big deal about approaching you. But if you approached him, he was a friendly and interesting conversationalist.”94
Mostly, though, Ted stood in receiving lines, a cocktail in his left hand as he shook hands with his right, thanking patrons for donations. In 1960, during a reception celebrating the staff of the Scripps Clinic, Ted stood patiently shaking hands and making small talk when he was introduced to a married couple who had only recently moved to the area: Dr. E. Grey Dimond, founder and head of the Institute for Cardiopulmonary Diseases at the Scripps Clinic in La Jolla, and his wife, Audrey, a former nurse who was now volunteering in local cancer wards.
“As we went through the line, I noticed that when we got to Dr. Seuss, the inflection of the person introducing us was
slightly different,” recalled Audrey. “I thought, ‘Well, it’s for some reason.’ Being my facetious best, I said, ‘Dr. Seuss, you must have a very interesting specialty.’” Then, drawing attention to Ted’s hawkish nose, she asked, “The right or the left nostril?”
Ted was caught flat-footed. “I remember him looking at me kind of startled and making no response,” said Audrey. “Of course, in no time at all, Helen and Ted became our very good friends, and we did things as a foursome. My husband was very taken with Ted.”95
And Ted was very taken with Audrey.
CHAPTER 12
THE WORK
1961–1963
Stan and Jan Berenstain were big fans of Dr. Seuss.
The laid-back, low-key married Berenstains—both thirty-eight years old in 1961—had been successful cartoonists since the early 1950s, with their accessible, family-oriented work appearing regularly in magazines like Collier’s and McCall’s, and in lighthearted parenting guides like The Berenstains’ Baby Book. The Berenstains were initially familiar with Dr. Seuss’s work as an adman, admiring his campaigns for Flit and Esso. Things would change, however, following the birth of their sons Leo and Michael—more specifically, beginning in December 1952, when four-year-old Leo asked for McElligot’s Pool as a Christmas gift. Reading the book was “a delight and a revelation,” the Berenstains later wrote. “It was rollicking, irreverent, and robust, and it was funny.”1 But it also, they admitted later, “scratched at an old itch” of theirs to write books for children.2
Nine years later, between magazine work and greeting card jobs, the Berenstains had at last written and illustrated their first real children’s book, featuring a family of bears based loosely on themselves—the first time they’d ever used bears in their storytelling. Titled Freddy Bear’s Spanking, the Berenstains’ book told in rhymed verse the story of a misbehaving little bear who tried to talk his way out of a spanking by proposing one alternative punishment after another. Their agent read through the pages, liked what he saw, and put them in touch with Phyllis Cerf—who also saw the potential in the talented couple and put them under contract with Beginner Books. The Berenstains were signed. Their book had been submitted. Now all that remained was to see Dr. Seuss himself, who now made frequent trips to New York to meet personally with Beginner Book authors.
The Berenstains were excited and slightly nervous as they exited the elevator on Random House’s sixth floor and headed for the stairs of the quirky clubhouse headquarters of Beginner Books. Geisel was already at the top of the steps waiting for them, in a bright red bow tie, with his glasses pushed up onto his forehead.
“Hi, Berenstains!” he called out. “Come on up!”3
As the couple walked into the main suite, they found the pages of their book pinned up on the corkboard walls of Geisel’s office. Ted, Helen, and Phyllis Cerf greeted the Berenstains warmly. Then Geisel immediately started asking pointed questions about the “internal workings” of the bears. “We need to know more about them,” said Geisel. “What are they about? Why do they live in a tree? What does Papa do for a living? What kind of pipe tobacco does he smoke?”4 (“There was no way Papa Bear was going to smoke,” grumbled Stan Berenstain.)5 Geisel didn’t necessarily want the Berenstains to include all that information in the story, but he wanted them to have an absolutely clear grasp of their characters and their world—that “logical insanity” that made Dr. Seuss books so oddly coherent. “It was slowly dawning on us that Ted took these little seventy-two-page, limited vocabulary, easy-to-read books just as seriously as if he were editing the Great American Novel,” the Berenstains said later.6
Geisel walked the Berenstains slowly around the room to look at their pages. “There’s a hell of a lot wrong with it,” he told them, pointing out places where he thought their story was too long or complicated. “Think short sentences,” Geisel instructed them as he picked apart their plot, telling them it had a good beginning and ending, but no real middle. And nothing, it seemed, was too small or unimportant. Even the length of the lines of text mattered; lines had to look good on the page, and to the extent possible, be of similar length. But when Phyllis tried to helpfully suggest the Berenstains not write their story in rhymed verse, Geisel interjected. “Their rhyme does work,” he insisted. “I like their rhyme. It’s got get-up-and-go. It just needs to be simplified and cleaned up a little.”7
At the end of the meeting, Helen unpinned the Berenstains’ pages and handed them back in an envelope. “Berenstains, I can’t tell you how happy I am to be working with you,” Ted told them as he shook their hands. “I just know we’re going to get a wonderful book.”8
The Berenstains left feeling “spent, drained, and exhausted, but also exhilarated, excited, and challenged.” As the Berenstains would discover, those emotional extremes would be typical of their thirty-year relationship with Ted Geisel. “Like the Cat [in the Hat], he could be charming, courtly, congenial, and delightful to be with,” wrote the Berenstains years later. “Also like the Cat, he could be demanding, dismissive, and downright difficult.”9
After leaving their first meeting with Geisel, the Berenstains boarded a train to take them back home to Pennsylvania. As they sat in a stunned silence, Jan quietly asked, “I wonder what Ted thinks of us?”
“You know,” said Stan, “I don’t think he thinks about us at all. I think all he thinks about is the work.”
That realization would be the key to their productive relationship. “That’s what Ted was about: the work,” wrote the Berenstains. “Every aspect of it: the title, the endpapers, the title page, the meter . . . He could spot a faulty iamb in your pentameter from a mile away.”10 His criticism, while often harsh, “was pretty much on target.”11 For the next several months, the Berenstains would rewrite and revise their story, consulting with Geisel in person in New York or mailing bulky packages back and forth between their home in suburban Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, and the Tower in La Jolla. “The process became progressively manic,” said the Berenstains—and Geisel, who tended to veer toward over-the-top action scenes, encouraged the Berenstains to come up with increasingly wilder scenarios until finally both Helen and Phyllis decided Ted had gone too far. “This is getting crazy,” Helen told her husband firmly. “You’re turning this into a Dr. Seuss book. That’s not what Stan and Jan do.”12
“Some of the air went out of [Ted’s] tires,” said the Berenstains—but Geisel conceded the point. The Berenstains chose instead to focus on one story element that had remained intact through every rewrite—a hunt for a beehive—and turn that into their main plot instead. “The fever had broken,” wrote the Berenstains with palpable relief. And so it had—at least for now.
Meanwhile, Geisel still had his own books to work on. In 1961, the pages pinned to the corkboard of his office in the Tower were for the collection The Sneetches and Other Stories, a reworking of a very brief single-paneled cartoon he had drawn for Redbook in 1953. The Sneetches was a not-so-subtle statement on discrimination, with Star-Belly Sneetches declaring their superiority to Plain-Belly Sneetches and refusing to socialize with them on the Sneetch beaches. There was likely an element of his own childhood trauma informing the story—memories of being shunned for the arbitrary offense of being German American during World War I—but more recently, Geisel had been shocked by the undercurrent of anti-Semitism that seemed to be slowly infiltrating his own community. He was stunned to learn, for example, that the Real Estate Brokers’ Association of La Jolla refused to rent or sell to Jewish families. And lately, one of his neighbors casually informed him that the La Jolla Beach and Tennis Club had an unspoken policy of not accepting Jewish members. “All it did was really confuse Ted,” said his friend Judith Morgan, “because that wasn’t who he was or the way he was thinking.”13
And yet Geisel knew he was walking a fine line. As he had with Grinch, he didn’t want to be seen as overtly preachy or deliberately moral—that would violate one of his c
ardinal rules of writing for kids. Making matters worse, a recent visitor to the Tower who had seen the pages pinned up in his study thought the book actually promoted anti-Semitism or prejudice—an assessment that sent Geisel spiraling into depression. When Bob Bernstein made the trip from Random House to check on Geisel’s progress with the book, he found him in a funk. “I’ve decided to abandon this book,” he informed Bernstein. “Someone I respect told me it was anti-Semitic.”14 A flabbergasted Bernstein told Geisel not to be rattled by “one stupid comment.”15 “His relief when I told him this was nonsense was overwhelming,” Bernstein said later. “I always found it hard to believe that this amazing man had self-doubt for even a moment.”16
Still, Geisel was going to sweat over every single line, discarding pages that went nowhere or moving them around on the wall. Other times, there might be a scrap of a good idea that didn’t seem to fit his story—but rather than throw those pages away, Geisel would put them in what he called his “bone pile,” usually just a drawer filled with discarded and half-realized ideas. “I dig into it occasionally and start working some of the material over again,” he explained later. “Some of it can be expanded into a book, other material is shortened to a story.”17
In the case of The Sneetches and Other Stories, he was taking several previously published brief magazine pieces and expanding them into a collection of slightly longer stories, which included not only “The Sneetches” but also “The Zaks,” (renamed as “The Zax”), a 1954 tale of two stubborn creatures who refuse to change direction. The Sneetches would also contain two other short stories, “Too Many Daves,” a three-pager about Mrs. McCave who named all twenty-three of her children Dave, and “What Was I Scared Of?” which contained what Geisel later said was one of his favorite characters, an empty—and misunderstood—pair of pants with a personality of its own. “I think there’s more life in the pair of green pants with no one inside them than a good many of the other [characters],” he said.18
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