Dr. Seuss wasn’t a doctor and his last name wasn’t Seuss. His name was Theodor Seuss Geisel (GUY-sul) and he was born on March 2, 1904 in Springfield, Massachusetts.Theordor’s parents were Henrietta (née Seuss) and Theodor Robert Geisel. The French word née (pronounced nay) means born, and we often use it in English to show the name a person was born with before changing it when getting married. So Theodor’s middle name, Seuss, comes from his mother’s original last name.As a child, Theodor and his family lived on Fairfield Street in Springfield. Their home was near Mulberry Street. More about Mulberry Street in a few minutes.Theodor loved the English language and decided he wanted to become an English teacher. He went to Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire and graduated in 1925. While there, he started signing funny things he drew and wrote with the name Seuss.The next step in reaching his goal was to go to college in England and study English literature. He traveled to England to study at Lincoln College, Oxford. While there he met and fell in love with a woman named Helen Palmer. She was so impressed with Theodor’s ability to draw, she told him to forget about becoming an English teacher and earn his living by drawing instead.Early in 1927, Theodor left Oxford without earning a degree. He returned to the United States and began trying to sell his writings and drawings to magazines. In July, he sold a cartoon to a magazine called The Saturday Evening Post. He was paid $25. That may not sound like much today, but in 1927 it was pretty good. Later that year he got a job as a writer and illustrator for a humor magazine called Judge. While there, he started signing his work, “Dr. Seuss.” He and Helen Palmer got married on November 29 of that year.The original German pronunciation of Seuss rhymes with voice. Theordor went with the American pronunciation so it would rhyme with Mother Goose. He said he added the Dr. to the name because his father always wanted him to be a medical doctor.Soon, the money Theodor was earning from magazine and advertising work made them wealthy.In 1936, Theodor and Helen were returning from Europe on an ocean liner. The rhythm of the ship’s engines caught Theodor’s attention and inspired him to write a poem called And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street. It was about a boy whose father always asks him what he saw that day, so the boy’s imagination goes wild, thinking up crazy thing after crazy thing that he could tell his father he saw walking home from school. When he gets home, though, he doesn’t tell any of the things he imagined.Theodor drew illustrations for the poem and submitted it to many book publishers, but none of them were interested. One day, after having been rejected by more than 30 publishers, he was walking down Madison Avenue in New York City with the manuscript. He planned to give up, go home, and burn it. But he happened to meet a guy, Mike McClintock, that he had gone to school with years before at Dartmouth College. McClintock had just started a job as an editor in the Vanguard Press children’s section. He suggested to Theodor that they take the book to Vanguard and see if they would publish it. Vanguard did, and it was a success.Theodor later said about his chance meeting with his friend, “If I had been going down the other side of Madison Avenue, I’d be in the dry-cleaning business today.”Because of the success of Mulberry Street, Theodor wrote and illustrated more books. And that’s how Dr. Seuss got his start.But wait. There’s another interesting event worth mentioning.In 1954, Life magazine published a report that said children were not learning to read because their books were boring. William Ellsworth Spaulding, who worked for a book publisher called Houghton Mifflin, made a list of 348 words he thought first graders should know. Spaulding showed the list to Theodor and challenged him to write a book using only words on the list. Nine months later, Theodor completed a book that used 236 of the words.Can you guess the name of the book?The Cat in the Hat. It could be read by beginning readers, yet was fun and interesting. Coupled with Theodor’s imaginative drawings, it was a huge hit. Other books for beginning readers followed, such as Green Eggs and Ham andOne Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. Even today, these books outsell many new books for young children.Why are Dr. Seuss books popular?Theodor said, “I don’t write for children, I write for people. Once a writer starts talking down to kids, he’s lost. Kids can pick up on that kind of thing.”Theodor Seuss Geisel died at the age of 87 on September 24, 1991 at La Jolla, California.Fun Facts• In 1955, Dartmouth College awarded Theodor an honorary doctorate of Humane Letters. Theodor joked that because of the honorary doctorate, he would have to sign his name Dr. Dr. Seuss.• Some people asked Theodor why he didn’t have any children. He replied, “You have ’em; I’ll entertain ’em.”• Some people today have used hip-hop music in the background and read Dr. Seuss books like a rap.
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