by Janet Pascal
Chapter 4
What I Saw on Mulberry Street
An editor at Viking Books saw the Flit advertisements and hired Ted to illustrate a book of mistakes made by schoolchildren. So Ted found himself drawing pictures for silly quotations like, “Benjamin Franklin produced electricity by rubbing cats backward.” The book was published in 1931. To Ted’s surprise, it became a big hit—and Viking signed him up to do a sequel.
Ted soon realized he’d make more money if he wrote and illustrated his own books. He began looking for the perfect subject for his first book.
In 1936, Ted and Helen took a trip to Europe. On the ship ride home, he scribbled picture book ideas in his notebook—ideas like “a stupid horse and wagon” and “flying cat pulling Viking ship.” Nothing seemed quite right. Meanwhile, the throbbing noise of the ship’s engines was driving him crazy. He started fitting words to it. Suddenly he found himself chanting, “And that is a story that no one can beat. And to think that I saw it on Mulberry Street.”
And there was his story. A little boy walking home on Mulberry Street—a main street in Ted’s hometown—looks for something interesting to tell his father about. All he can see is “a plain horse and wagon.” But by the time he reaches his house, he has turned the horse and wagon into a whole circus parade, with blue elephants and a brass band.
All the rhymes in Dr. Seuss’s books bounce along so naturally that people think they must have been easy to write. But Ted worked hard. “I know my stuff looks like it was all rattled off in twenty-eight seconds,” he complained, “but every word is a struggle.” For one picture book, he might write and tear up five hundred or even one thousand pages.
Finally Ted was happy with And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street. He started sending it to publishers. They all rejected it. Most editors found it just too different. They thought the verse was rough and silly. Worst of all, it didn’t have a moral. It wouldn’t help make children behave better. “What’s wrong with kids having fun reading without being preached at?” Ted yelled.
Ted was about to give up when he ran into another Dartmouth friend. Marshall McClintock had just that day become the children’s book editor for Vanguard Press. Vanguard often published books that were “different.” They were delighted with the book and immediately said yes. Ted was so grateful, he named the hero in the book “Marco” after McClintock’s son.
Chapter 5
An Elephant up a Tree
Reviewers loved Mulberry Street, and it sold very well—for a children’s book. But during the Depression, people didn’t have a lot of money to spend on children’s books. To make a living, Ted had to keep doing ads. He said he couldn’t tell if he was a real author or “just a lowly advertising man.”
His second book was inspired by one of his favorite things—hats. He and Helen liked to travel. Everywhere they went, he would buy hats—maybe a fireman’s hat from Peru or a fancy European helmet. Sometimes when he got stuck while writing, he would put on a hat as a “thinking cap.” One day Ted would invent the most famous hat of all and put it on a cat, but for now, he wrote The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins.
Ted and Helen had recently learned they could not have children. Later, Ted said he hadn’t wanted kids, anyway. They made him nervous. “You have ’em, I’ll amuse ’em,” he would tell people. But his niece believed that, really, he would have loved to have had a child.
He dealt with the sad news in his own way. He invented a daughter named Chrysanthemum-Pearl and dedicated his new book to her. He and Helen sometimes included Chrysanthemum-Pearl on their Christmas cards, along with other imaginary children such as Norval, Wickersham, and Thnud.
With two children’s books out, the name of Dr. Seuss was becoming well-known. Ted had always pronounced his name in the German fashion: “Zoyce.” But most of his readers said “Soose.” Ted liked that this rhymed with Mother Goose, so he started saying “Soose,” too.
Random House, a much bigger publisher than Vanguard, became interested in Dr. Seuss. The head of Random House, Bennett Cerf, promised to publish anything Ted wrote. How could he resist? He was sad to leave his friends at Vanguard. But he loved Random House. They stayed his publisher for the rest of his life. Over the years, he became close friends with many of the people he worked with there.
His first book for them was not what Random House hoped for. The Seven Lady Godivas was for grown-ups and was full of pictures of naked ladies. This was not Ted’s strong point, and Bennett Cerf didn’t think the book was very good. Still he kept his promise to let Ted publish whatever he wanted. The book was a complete flop. Ted went back to children’s books.
One day around 1939 (at least as he told the story), Ted left his window open. The wind blew around some doodles he had left out. When he came back, there was a drawing of an elephant on top of a drawing of a tree. Why would an elephant be in a tree? Was he hatching an egg? Ted named the elephant Horton, but he got stuck trying to figure out what should happen to him.
“I’m very upset,” Helen told a friend, “because Ted has that elephant up a tree, and he doesn’t know how he’s going to get him down.” It was Helen who finally came up with an ending. Horton would hatch an elephant-bird—like the flying cow she had once seen doodled in Ted’s notebook.
Ted loved Horton Hatches the Egg more than anything else he’d written. He told his editor that it was the funniest children’s book ever. Everyone else loved it, too. Horton the elephant is still one of Dr. Seuss’s most beloved characters.
But by the time the book came out in 1940, Ted was not thinking about elephant-birds. He was worried and unhappy about what was going on in the world around him. World War II had broken out in Europe. His parents’ homeland, Germany, was now controlled by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. Hitler wanted to rule all of Europe. Most Americans still hoped the United States could stay out of the war, but not Ted. Even though he hated war, the Nazis had to be stopped. If his funny drawings could convince people to buy Flit, could they convince them to fight Hitler? Ted turned his attention to the war and did not write another children’s book for seven years.
Chapter 6
Private SNAFU
Ted began drawing political cartoons that criticized people who thought America should stay out of the war. He showed them as ostriches burying their heads in the sand, ignoring the danger around them.
On December 7, 1941, Germany’s ally, Japan, bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, and the United States entered the war. Now Ted felt that just drawing cartoons wasn’t enough. At thirty-eight, he was old to be a soldier, but he enlisted in the army, anyway. The army knew exactly what to do with a gentle, clumsy artist who couldn’t shoot a gun. He was sent to Hollywood, California. There he made movies to train new soldiers.
Ted didn’t know anything about making movies, but he knew how to hold people’s interest. He helped create the Private SNAFU cartoons. Private SNAFU was a lazy, careless soldier who did everything wrong. (SNAFU stands for “Situation Normal, All Fouled Up.”) Private SNAFU showed soldiers what not to do.
Later, Ted was promoted to working on live films. He helped write two films about what the US should do in Germany and Japan after the war was won. Revised versions of the films both won Oscars. But today they are completely unknown.
With two Oscars to his credit, Ted thought maybe he would work on movies instead of books. But he quickly changed his mind. He saw that the postwar world would be full of promise as well as danger. He decided nothing was more important than writing children’s books. “The new generations must grow up to be more intelligent than ours,” he wrote.
THE QUESTION OF WAR
AT THE BEGINNING OF 1941, EIGHTY PERCENT OF AMERICANS WERE AGAINST THE IDEA OF THE UNITED STATES JOINING THE WAR AGAINST GERMANY. WITH AN ENTIRE OCEAN SEPARATING AMERICA FROM EUROPE, THESE PEOPLE—CALLED ISOLATIONISTS—FELT THAT THE TROUBLES IN EUROPE WERE VERY FAR AWAY. THEY BELIEVED THAT THE DUTY OF THE UNITED STATES WAS TO PROTECT ITSELF.
BUT TED DID NOT FEEL
ISOLATED FROM THE FIGHTING IN EUROPE. HE SAID, “WHILE PARIS WAS BEING OCCUPIED BY THE CLANKING TANKS OF THE NAZIS . . . I FOUND I COULD NO LONGER KEEP MY MIND ON DRAWING PICTURES OF HORTON THE ELEPHANT.” IN HIS POLITICAL CARTOONS, TED TRIED TO SHOW HOW CLOSELY THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD WERE CONNECTED TO ONE ANOTHER. IN ONE DRAWING, HE SHOWED UNCLE SAM HAPPILY TAKING A BATH. UNCLE SAM IS THINKING, “THE OLD FAMILY BATHTUB IS PLENTY SAFE FOR ME.” BECAUSE HIS EYES ARE SHUT, HE DOES NOT SEE THAT THE TUB IS FILLED WITH A SHARK, A CROCODILE, AND A POISONOUS BUG READY TO CHOMP ON HIM.
Chapter 7
A Moose, a Nerd, and the Whos
Ted’s joy at the end of World War II was cut short by the death of his sister, Marnie. Because of a family quarrel, she and Ted had fallen out of touch. She died before they could make up. Her death upset him so much that he avoided talking about her for the rest of his life.
Now that the war was over, Ted and Helen decided to stay in California. They bought an old observation tower on a mountain outside La Jolla, a beautiful California town on the Pacific coast. For years, the tower had been empty, and it was a favorite meeting place for young couples. The walls were covered with carved initials. Even after the Geisels moved in, some couples would still try to come inside.
One of Ted’s first books after the war was Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose. Thidwick is too nice and lets other animals push him around. At the end of the story, Ted asks readers, “Well, what would YOU do if it happened to YOU?” Ted ended many of his books this way, by asking questions. He wanted kids to enjoy his stories. But he also wanted to help them think for themselves.
Ted began to turn out one or two books every year. They were funny, original, and very different from one another. People often asked Ted where he got his ideas. He said that he usually started by doodling. “I may doodle a couple of animals. If they bite each other, it’s going to be a good book.” After a while he got tired of this question. He started saying that he got his ideas from the people in a small town “called Über Gletch. I go there on the fourth of August every summer to get my cuckoo clock repaired.” From then on, he gave this answer to everyone—even President John F. Kennedy’s wife, Jacqueline.
Some of his books were inspired by the real world. In 1953, Life magazine sent Ted and Helen to Japan to find out how the country was coping after the war. Ted had mixed feelings about the Japanese. In his wartime cartoons, he had shown Japanese people—even US citizens—as villains.
But as he talked to teachers and schoolchildren in Japan, he got past this prejudice. He saw that the people of Japan were trying to honor the importance of each individual and still work together for the common good.
Back in his studio, Ted explored what he had learned in Japan. To do this, he returned to one of his most beloved characters—Horton the elephant. In Horton Hears a Who!, Horton must save the tiny world of Who-ville by proving it exists. He can do this only by getting every Who, even the very smallest and laziest, to work together. Horton is willing to risk everything for the Whos because “a person’s a person no matter how small.” Ted dedicated the book to a Japanese friend.
By the time Horton Hears a Who! was published, personal troubles had taken over Ted’s life. Helen was suffering from a terrible illness. She could not breathe on her own and had to be put in an iron lung—a huge metal case that enclosed most of her body. Ted spent hours sitting beside her in the hospital. When she came home, Ted rigged up mirrors so Helen could watch their dog playing outside.
Ted had relied on Helen for everything. She helped him with all his books and ran his life for him. Without her, he didn’t even know how to balance a checkbook.
Helen amazed her doctors by recovering almost completely. By May 1955, she was able to travel back to Dartmouth with Ted to see him get an honorary doctorate. Years ago, he had disappointed his father by not earning a degree from Oxford. But now he made up for it. He was no longer just Dr. Seuss, he boasted. He was Dr. Dr. Seuss.
THE FIRST NERD
TED LOVED TO INVENT WORDS LIKE THNEED AND SALA-MA-GOO. ONE OF HIS WORDS ESCAPED FROM ITS BOOK AND BECAME PART OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. DR. SEUSS WAS THE FIRST PERSON TO USE THE WORD NERD. IN IF I RAN THE ZOO, PUBLISHED IN 1959, YOUNG GERALD MCGREW PLANS TO “SAIL TO KA-TROO AND BRING BACK . . . A NERD.” NO ONE KNOWS QUITE HOW IT HAPPENED, BUT WITHIN A YEAR, TEENAGERS IN DETROIT WERE USING NERD TO MEAN “A DRIP OR SQUARE,” AND SOON THE NEW WORD HAD SPREAD ACROSS THE WHOLE COUNTRY.
Chapter 8
The Cat in the Hat Arrives
In 1954, an article appeared in Life, a popular weekly magazine. It asked why American children had so much trouble learning to read. Was it because books for beginning readers were so boring? Teachers thought children learned to read by seeing the same words over and over. So early readers used short, choppy sentences that just kept repeating the same thing. Why would smart children read these dull books? If someone like Dr. Seuss wrote an early reader, maybe children would actually want to read it.
A friend of Ted’s, William Spaulding, worked for the publisher Houghton Mifflin. He read the article and said to Ted, “Write me a story that first-graders can’t put down!” Ted was willing to try. Random House and Houghton Mifflin worked out an agreement. Houghton Mifflin would sell the book to schools and libraries, and Random House would sell it to bookstores.
William Spaulding gave Ted a list of about three hundred words that most first-graders should know. The book could only use about 225 words, and all of them had to come from this list. Ted thought it would be easy to toss off a little story—but he soon found out it was almost impossible. Every time he had an idea, he needed a word that wasn’t on the list. He spent more than a year trying and failing. Finally he decided, “I’ll read [the list] once more and if I can find two words that rhyme, that will be my book.” He found them—cat and hat—and The Cat in the Hat was born.
The Cat in the Hat was published in 1957. Many teachers didn’t like it. They thought it looked too much like a comic book and it wasn’t serious. Some librarians hid it and hoped kids wouldn’t find it. Houghton Mifflin, which handled school and library sales, didn’t sell many copies.
But kids loved The Cat in the Hat. They read it and told their friends about it. Bookstores couldn’t keep it on the shelves. It just kept selling and never stopped. Within three years, it had sold over one million copies. Of everything he had ever written, Ted said, “It’s the book I’m proudest of . . .”
At Random House, Bennett Cerf’s wife, Phyllis, thought The Cat in the Hat should be just the beginning. She wanted to publish a whole series of books like it—books that used just a few words but were so much fun kids would actually want to read them. She convinced her husband to let her start a new company at Random House. It would be run by Phyllis, Ted, and Helen. Called Beginner Books, it would publish beginning readers by Dr. Seuss and also by other people.
Right away, Beginner Books was a hit. Random House became the nation’s largest publisher of children’s books. Ted was happy to publish books by old friends from his army days, like P. D. Eastman, who wrote Are You My Mother? and Go, Dog. Go! He also published a book by Marshall McClintock, the Vanguard editor who had given him his start years before. And he discovered books about a family of bears written by Stan and Jan Berenstain.
Bennett Cerf was amused by the word list Beginner Books authors had to use. If writing a book using only three hundred words was so hard, he asked, what about one with even fewer? He bet Ted fifty dollars that he couldn’t write a book using only fifty words. Bennett Cerf lost his bet. Ted wrote and illustrated Green Eggs and Ham using exactly fifty words. It remains the most popular of all his books and the fourth best-selling children’s book of all time.
THE BABY BOOM
BEGINNER BOOKS BEGAN AT THE BEST POSSIBLE TIME. AFTER WORLD WAR II, AMERICAN FAMILIES STARTED HAVING LOTS OF CHILDREN. BY 1957, THERE WERE MORE KIDS JUST LEARNING TO READ THAN EVER BEFORE. AT THE SAME TIME, THE UNITED STATES WAS MORE AND MORE AFRAID OF THE USSR, A GROUP OF COM
MUNIST COUNTRIES. PEOPLE WERE WORRIED THAT SCHOOLS IN THESE COUNTRIES WERE BETTER AT TRAINING CHILDREN TO BECOME SCIENTISTS AND INVENTORS. SO IN 1958, THE US GOVERNMENT BEGAN TO POUR MONEY INTO SCHOOLS AND LIBRARIES. SOME OF THIS MONEY WAS USED TO BUY BOOKS LIKE DR. SEUSS’S BEGINNER BOOKS SERIES.
Chapter 9
Grinches and Turtles and Sneetches
In 1957 The Cat in the Hat turned Ted into a superstar author. He had become the head of his own publishing house. As if that wasn’t enough for one year, he also invented the Grinch.
Ted liked to hint that the Grinch was Dr. Seuss himself. He even had a license plate that said “GRINCH.” As for where the name came from, he said, “I just drew him and looked at him, and it was obvious to me who he was.”
As soon as it was published, How the Grinch Stole Christmas! was a big hit. A few years later, Ted got a call from an old friend, Chuck Jones. He was now a famous animator, and the creator of Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote. He wanted to make a version of the Grinch for TV. Ted was uneasy about the idea, but he trusted Jones. He even let him turn the Grinch green. (He had been black-and-white with pink eyes in the book.) The Grinch Christmas special appeared on TV in 1966 and has been a holiday favorite ever since.