Read -- And the Places You'll Go

The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.” – Dr. Seuss

Today we celebrate national Read Across America day in honor of the birthdate of Theodor Geisel – better known to his legions of readers everywhere as the incomparable Dr. Seuss.  Read Across America day is an initiative on reading created by the National Education Association and recognizing the impact of Geisel’s 46 books (and counting, since more have been uncovered in his papers and are being published).

While much has been written about Geisel’s successes, little has been said about a book that almost became a failure and nearly kept his great talent hidden.  A very successful ad agency writer in the 1930s, Geisel was on a cruise ship headed home from Europe when he was inspired to write his first children’s book.  On his return to his home in New York City, he shopped it around to publisher after publisher, eventually being turned down by more than 40. Disheartened by all the rejections, he was about to burn the manuscript when he was encouraged by a college classmate to try just one more. That publisher agreed to publish it as a “shared” project, and it clicked.

And to think I saw it on Mulberry Street became a modest success and so Geisel wrote a second book, which he said he never would have written had it not been for that last-ditch effort on the first.  It was called The 500 hats of Bartholomew Cubbins, and Seuss, as he chose to call his writing name, was on his way.

Perhaps Seuss’ most famous book came about on a publisher’s dare.  In May 1954, Life Magazine 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, the director of the education division at Houghton Mifflin who later became its chairman, compiled a list of 348 words he felt were important for first-graders to recognize and asked Geisel to cut the list to 250 words and write a book using only those words.   Spaulding challenged Geisel to "bring back a book children can't put down."

  

Using 236 of the words, Geisel wrote The Cat in the Hat, a book that could be read by beginning readers everywhere.  It continues to be the most successful beginners’ book ever created, selling more than half-a-million copies annually and found in nearly every home, school and library across the nation.

 

Theodor “Dr. Seuss” Geisel

 

“I like nonsense,” Geisel once wrote.  “It wakes up the brain cells.  Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living.  It’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope.  Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life’s realities.”

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