Theodore Geisel: His Books Still Enchant Us

Young children learn the joys of reading by being read to, experts tell us. And parents and teachers know that the books adults read to kids tend to be the ones that don't make our teeth itch with boredom. So let's tip our striped top hats to Theodore Seuss Geisel, a.k.a. Dr. Seuss, for letting parents share in the joy of educational nonsense.

Born in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1904, Geisel spent the early years of his career as a magazine cartoonist and as an advertising man for Standard Oil. His first book, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, was rejected twenty-seven times before Vanguard Press published it in 1937. His first big hit, the fabulously daffy The Cat in the Hat, was an assignment to create a children's primer using only 225 "new-reader" vocabulary words. By the time the good doctor died in 1991, he'd written and illustrated forty-four books. Every parent and every child has a favorite Seuss, no doubt, but who can resist Green Eggs and Ham, which reminds us all that Sam we are?

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