Quick facts for kids Dr. Seuss | |
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Dr. Seuss in 1957 | |
| Born | Theodor Seuss Geisel (1904-03-02)March 2, 1904 Springfield, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Died | September 24, 1991(1991-09-24) (aged 87) San Diego, California, U.S. |
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| Genre | Children's literature |
| Years active | 1921–1990 |
| Spouse | Audrey Stone Dimond (m. 1968) |
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Theodor Seuss Geisel ( March 2, 1904 – September 24, 1991) was an American children's author and cartoonist. He is known for his work writing and illustrating more than 60 books under the pen nameDr. Seuss. His work includes many of the most popular children's books of all time, selling over 600 million copies and being translated into more than 20 languages by the time of his death.
Geisel was born and raised in Springfield, Massachusetts. His parents were Henrietta (née Seuss) and Theodor Robert Geisel. Mulberry Street in Springfield, made famous in his first children's book And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, is near his boyhood home on Fairfield Street.
Geisel attended Dartmouth College, graduating in 1925. At Dartmouth, he joined the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity and the humor magazine Dartmouth Jack-O-Lantern, eventually rising to the rank of editor-in-chief. Arounf this time, Geisel began signing his work with the pen name "Seuss". He was encouraged in his writing by professor of rhetoric W. Benfield Pressey, whom he described as his "big inspiration for writing" at Dartmouth.
Upon graduating from Dartmouth, he entered Lincoln College, Oxford, intending to earn a Doctor of Philosophy (D.Phil.) in English literature. At Oxford, he met his future wife Helen Palmer, who encouraged him to give up becoming an English teacher in favor of pursuing drawing as a career.
Geisel left Oxford without earning a degree and returned to the United States in February 1927. He immediately began submitting writings and drawings to magazines, book publishers, and advertising agencies.
His first nationally published cartoon appeared in the 16 July 1927, issue of The Saturday Evening Post. This single $25 sale encouraged Geisel to move from Springfield to New York City. Later that year, Geisel accepted a job as writer and illustrator at the humor magazine Judge, and he felt financially stable enough to marry Palmer. His first cartoon for Judge appeared on October 22, 1927, and Geisel and Palmer were married on November 29. Geisel's first work signed "Dr. Seuss" was published in Judge about six months after he started working there.
His work was in demand and began to appear regularly in magazines such as Life, Liberty and Vanity Fair.
The money Geisel earned from his advertising work and magazine submissions made him wealthier than even his most successful Dartmouth classmates. The increased income allowed the Geisels to move to better quarters and to socialize in higher social circles. They became friends with the wealthy family of banker Frank A. Vanderlip. They also traveled a lot: by 1936, Geisel and his wife had visited 30 countries together. They did not have children, neither kept regular office hours, and they had ample money. Geisel also felt that traveling helped his creativity.
In 1936, Geisel and his wife were returning from an ocean voyage to Europe when the rhythm of the ship's engines inspired the poem that became his first children's book: And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street. Based on Geisel's varied accounts, the book was rejected by between 20 and 43 publishers. According to Geisel, he was walking home to burn the manuscript when a chance encounter with an old Dartmouth classmate led to its publication by Vanguard Press.
Geisel wrote four more books before the US entered World War II. This included The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins in 1938, as well as The King's Stilts and The Seven Lady Godivas in 1939, all of which were in prose, atypically for him. This was followed by Horton Hatches the Egg in 1940, in which Geisel returned to the use of verse.
During World War II, he took a brief hiatus from children's literature to illustrate political cartoons, and he also worked in the animation and film department of the United States Army where he wrote, produced or animated many productions including Design for Death, which later won the 1947 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film.
After the war, Geisel returned to writing children's books, writing classics like If I Ran the Zoo (1950), Horton Hears a Who! (1955), The Cat in the Hat (1957), How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1957), Green Eggs and Ham (1960), One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish (1960), The Sneetches and Other Stories (1961), The Lorax (1971), The Butter Battle Book (1984), and Oh, the Places You'll Go! (1990). He published over 60 books during his career, which have spawned numerous adaptations, including 11 television specials, five feature films, a Broadway musical, and four television series.
In May 1954, Life published a report on illiteracy among school children which concluded that children were not learning to read because their books were boring.
William Ellsworth Spaulding, who was the director of the education division at Houghton Mifflin at that time, compiled a list of 348 words that he felt were important for first-graders to recognize. He asked Geisel to cut the list to 250 words and to write a book using only those words. Spaulding challenged Geisel to "bring back a book children can't put down".
Nine months later, Geisel completed The Cat in the Hat, using 236 of the words given to him. It retained the drawing style, verse rhythms, and all the imaginative power of Geisel's earlier works but, because of its simplified vocabulary, it could be read by beginning readers. The Cat in the Hat and subsequent books written for young children achieved significant international success and they remain very popular today.
For example, in 2009, Green Eggs and Ham sold 540,000 copies, The Cat in the Hat sold 452,000 copies, and One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish (1960) sold 409,000 copies—all outselling the majority of newly published children's books.
Geisel went on to write many other children's books, both in his new simplified-vocabulary manner (sold as Beginner Books) and in his older, more elaborate style.
Geisel's wife Helen had a long struggle with illnesses. On October 23, 1967, Helen died.
Eight months later, on June 21, 1968, Geisel married Audrey Dimond. Although he devoted most of his life to writing children's books, Geisel had no children of his own, saying of children: "You have 'em; I'll entertain 'em." Dimond added that Geisel "lived his whole life without children and he was very happy without children." Audrey oversaw Geisel's estate until her death on December 19, 2018, at the age of 97.
Geisel died of cancer on September 24, 1991, at his home in the La Jolla community of San Diego at the age of 87. His ashes were scattered in the Pacific Ocean.
You're wrong as the deuce
And you shouldn't rejoice
If you're calling him Seuss.
He pronounces it Soice (or Zoice)
For most of his career, Geisel was reluctant to have his characters marketed in contexts outside of his own books. However, he did permit the creation of several animated cartoons, an art form in which he had gained experience during World War II, and he gradually relaxed his policy as he aged.
The first adaptation of one of Geisel's works was a cartoon version of Horton Hatches the Egg, animated at Warner Bros. in 1942 and directed by Bob Clampett. It was presented as part of the Merrie Melodies series and included a number of gags not present in the original narrative.
In Spanish: Dr. Seuss para niños