Dr. Seuss: The Great American Children’s Poet Dr. Seuss is the pseudonym for Theodor Seuss Geisel III, Ted Geisel this friends. He originally thought of his pen name being pronounced zo- is the German pronunciation. He took his middle name from his mother’s maiden name.
He was born in 1904 to Theodor Jr. and Henrietta Geisel of SpringfielMassachusetts. Both sets of grandparents were from Germany. Theodor Jr. was a wealthy brewer and tavern owner until the Prohibition. Then he worked as the manager of the Springfield Zoo.
Ted also had an older sister named Marnie. He went to college at Dartmouth and graduate school at Oxford. While at Dartmouth he got into a bit of trouble when the police arrested him for drinking. (This was during the Prohibition. ) As punishment he was kicked off the school magazine, The Jack O’Lantern, to which he contributed as a cartoonist. To get around the rule he began to sign his work as Dr.
Seuss. And that is why Ted Geisel became Dr. Seuss. While at Oxford he met his first wife Helen Palmer to whom he was married for 40 years until her death.
They moved to New York. While in New York he worked drawing cartoon advertisements for Flit, an insect repellent. It was he who coined the phrase “Quick Henry, the Flit” which was to 1930 s advertising what “Just Do It” is to 1990 s advertising. Sort of. They later moved to La Jolla, California where Ted lived for the rest of his life. They loved children although they were unable to have any of their own.
The Essay on Dr Seuss Life Ted Theodor Satellite
The assassination of an Archduke was known to be the start of World War I. Seuss was only ten years of age. He did not take part in the fighting because he was too young, although many of his fellow towns people fought for our country. In 1945, the first color television was introduced in the US. When this included coast-to-coast live television became possible. Thousands upgraded the old black ...
About five years after Helem’s death he married Audrey Stone. He died in 1991 in his sleep at the age of 87. He wrote 57 books spanning seven decades from 1939’sAnd To Think I Saw It On Mulberry Street to 1992’s posthumously published Daisy-Head Maize. He received a special Pulitzer Prize recognizing his contribution to children’s literatur.
He also received an Emmy for The Grinch Who Stole Christmas and an Oscar for his screenplay for Gerald Mc Boing-Boing which Chuck Jones (of Looney Tunes fame) animated. Dr. Seuss completely revolutionized the field of children’s beginner books. Before Dr. Seuss the books were of the See Dick. See Dick run.
type. Withthe Cat In The Hat all that changed by creating a fun, interesting story that a young reader could read. Ted Geisel also ran the publishing company Beginner Books (a division of Random House).
He thus was the publisher of many of his own books. Beginner Books also fostered several other children’s writers, most notably Stan and Jan Berenstain, creators of the Berenstain Bears. Ted had so many demands with running the publishing company that he felt some of his writings were not up to par.
These he published under two different pseudonyms, Rosetta Stone. and Theo. Le S eig (Geisel spelled backwards).
He did not illustrate these himself but rather let other people do that.
Why did Dr. Seuss write. For many reasons. He loved children and wanted to entertain them and instill in them a love for reading. He wanted to tell the stories inside him as only he could with his beautiful illustrations and nonsense words. But perhaps the most important reason was he loved writing the almost musical rhymes that a generation of Americans grew up with more than he loved to do anything else..
