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Dr. Seuss Facts

Dr. Seuss Facts
Dr. Seuss was born on March 2nd, 1904 in Springfield, Massachusetts. His name at birth was Theodore Seuss Geisel and his parents were Theodor Robert and Henrietta Geisel. He attended Springfield Central High School and graduated in 1921. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1925. After being caught drinking gin in his dorm room the dean forced Theodore to resign from all extracurricular activities, including his job as editor in chief of the humor magazine at Dartmouth. Theodore continued to write for the magazine but used the pen name Seuss. After Dartmouth Seuss attended Lincoln College, at Oxford, but he quit to pursue a drawing career. The first time he signed his name as Dr. Seuss was in the magazine Judge.
Interesting Dr. Seuss Facts:
Dr. Seuss married Helen Palmer on November 29th, 1927.
During the Great Depression Dr. Seuss supported him and his wife with his drawing talent. He drew advertising for companies such as NBC, General Electric, and Standard Oil.
Dr. Seuss has a comic strip for a short time called Hejji.
Dr. Seuss' income allowed him and his wife to travel. By the year 1936 they had traveled to 30 different countries.
On the return voyage from Europe Dr. Seuss was inspired to write And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street. It was rejected by 20 to 43 publishers before Vanguard Press decided to publish it.
Before the beginning of World War II Dr. Seuss wrote four more books including The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins (1938), The King's Stilts (1939), The Seven Lady Godivas (1939), and Horton Hatches the Egg (1940).
Dr. Seuss was not an actual doctor but he did attend prestigious schools. He did receive honorary doctorates. Dartmouth gave him one in 1955. He later received one from Princeton as well.
Dr. Seuss' most notable works include (but are not limited to) Horton Hears a Who! (1954), The Cat in the Hat (1957), How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1957), Green Eggs and Ham (1960), and The Lorax (1971).
During World War II Dr. Seuss worked for the Animation Department of the U.S. Armed Forces, making films about peace in Europe and adult training videos.
The short film Gerald McBoing-Boing (1950) won the Academy Award for Animated Short Film. It was based on one of Dr. Seuss' stories.
After World War II ended Dr. Seuss returned to writing children's books.
The Cat in the Hat was written because of a challenge that the director of education division at Houghton Mifflin presented to him. The challenge was to write a book using 236 words given to him. The words were believed to be the most important for first-graders to recognize. Dr. Seuss handed in his manuscript nine months later.
In 1967, following an illness with cancer, Dr. Seuss' wife died.
Dr. Seuss married Audrey Stone in 1968.
Dr. Seuss died on September 21st, 1991, with oral cancer, at the age of 87.
There are many memorials to Dr. Seuss including awards, sculpture gardens, and a library has been named after him.
Many of Dr. Seuss books have been made into movies, including How the Grinch Stole Christmas, The Cat in the Hat, Horton Hears a Who! and The Lorax.
In total Dr. Seuss published more than 40 books between 1937 and 1991.


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