Theodor Seuss Geisel was born on March 2, 1904, in Springfield, Massachusetts. His father owned a brewery until the start of Prohibition in the 1920s when the buying and selling of alcohol was made illegal. Geisel ‘s father then took a job superintendent of city parks, which included the local zoo. There, young Theodor spent many days drawing the animals and eventually developed his own style. Although he later gained fame due to his unique artistic style, he never got around to taking an art lesson.
After finishing high school, Geisel graduated from Dartmouth College in 1925, and later studied at Oxford University’s Lincoln College in England. After leaving Oxford, he traveled throughout Europe, mingling with émigrés in Paris, including the writer Ernest Hemingway . Upon his return to New York, he spent fifteen years in the advertising world before joining the Army and making two Oscar-winning documentaries, ” Hitler Lives ” and ” Death Design, ” which he made with Hitler’s wife. he, Helen Parker Geisel. He also won an Oscar for his animated film ” Gerald McBoing Boing ” (1951). At that time Geiselhe began drawing and selling his cartoons to national magazines, including Vanity Fair and the Saturday Evening Post. He later worked as an editorial cartoonist for the New York PM newspaper.
Geisel began writing the lines for his first book, ” And To Think I Saw Him on Mulberry Street ,” in 1936 during a rough sea voyage. But success didn’t come easy for the young author, as Mulberry Street was rejected by twenty-nine different publishers before it was finally accepted. Published in 1937, the book won much praise, largely due to its unique drawings.
All of Geisel ‘s books , in fact, feature wacky-looking creatures that are sometimes based on real animals, but usually consist of bizarre combinations of objects like a centipede and a horse and a camel with a feather duster on its head. . Unlike many puppeteers and cartoonists who cashed in on his creations by selling their more familiar images to the big toy manufacturers, Dr. Seuss concentrated his efforts on creating interesting books.
In May 1954, after a series of successful books, he published what would become his most famous book, The Cat in the Hat .
Geisel ‘s last two books spent several months on the best-seller lists and included themes that appealed to both adults and children. ” I can finally say that I don’t write for children, but for people ,” she told the Los Angeles Times. Many of her readers were surprised to learn that Geisel had no children of her own, although she did have stepchildren from her second marriage to Audrey Stone Dimond.
Theodor Geisel passed away on September 24, 1991, in La Jolla, California. For children of all ages, Dr. Seuss remains the most famous and influential name in children’s literature.
Phrases
-Being crazy isn’t enough.
-They say I’m old-fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast!
-Oh the things you can find, if you don’t stay behind!
-In the places I go there are things that I see that I never could spell if I stopped with the Z.
-How did it get so late so soon? Its night before its afternoon. December is here before its June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?
-Simple it’s not, I am afraid you will find, for a mind-maker-upper to make up his mind.
-I know, up on top you are seeing great sights, but down here at the bottom we, too, should have rights.
-Today I shall behave, as if this is the day I will be remembered.
-I meant what I said and I said what I meant.
-In my world, everyone’s a pony and they all eat rainbows and poop butterflies!
-I’m telling you this ‘cause you’re one of my friends. My alphabet starts where your alphabet ends!
-Think and wonder, wonder and think.
-So be sure when you step, step with care and great tact. And remember that life’s A Great Balancing Act. And will you succeed? Yes! You will, indeed! (98 and ¾ percent guaranteed) Kid, you’ll move mountains.
-Only you can control your future.
-You’re off to Great Places! Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting, So… get on your way!
-He who makes a beast out of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.
-You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who’ll decide where to go…
-Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.
-Remember me and smile, for it’s better to forget than to remember me and cry.
-You’ll be on your way up! You’ll be seeing great sights! You’ll join the high fliers who soar to high heights.
-Just tell yourself, Duckie, you’re really quite lucky!
-With your head full of brains and your shoes full of feet, you’re too smart to go down any not-so-good street.
-Congratulations! Today is your day!
-Think! You can think any Think that you wish!
-Teeth are always in style.
-You do not like them. So you say. Try them! Try them! And you may!
-And you very small persons will not have to die if you make yourselves heard! So come on, now, and TRY!
-If you never did you should. These things are fun and fun is good
-From there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere!
-I know it is wet and the sun is not sunny, but we can have lots of good fun that is funny.
-When he worked, he really worked. But when he played, he really PLAYED.
-Day Play. We play all day. Night Fight. We fight all night.
-You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.
-I’m glad we had the times together just to laugh and sing a song, seems like we just got started and then before you know it, the times we had together were gone.
-To the world you may be one person; but to one person you may be the world.
-Adults are just obsolete children and the hell with them.
-Adults are just outdated children.
-You make ‘em, I amuse ‘em.
-Sometimes, when I see my granddaughters make small discoveries of their own, I wish I were a child.
-Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is You-er than You.
-So, open your mouth, lad! For every voice counts!
-A person’s a person, no matter how small.
-If you’d never been born, then you might be an Isn’t! An Isn’t has no fun at all. No, he didn’t!
-Don’t give up. I believe in you all.
-I am what I am! That’s a great thing to be! If I say so my self, Happy Birthday to me!
-Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.
-I have heard there are troubles of more than one kind. Some come from ahead and some come from behind. But I’ve bought a big bat. I’m all ready you see. Now my troubles are going to have troubles with me!
-It’s a troublesome world. All the people who are in it are troubled with troubles almost every minute. You ought to be thankful, a whole heaping lot, for the places and people you’re lucky you’re not.
-Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.
-If things start happening, don’t worry, don’t stew, just go right along and you’ll start happening too.
-All alone! Whether you like it or not, alone is something you’ll be quite a lot!
-Everything stinks till it’s finished.
-I’m sorry to say so but, sadly it’s true that bang-ups and hang-ups can happen to you.
-Things may happen and often do to people as brainy and footsy as you.
-I’m afraid sometimes you’ll play lonely games too, games you can’t win because you’ll play against you.
-When you’re in a Slump, you’re not in for much fun. Un-slumping yourself is not easily done.
-You’re never too old, too wacky, too wild, to pick up a book and read to a child.
-The problem with writing a book in verse is, to be successful, it has to sound like you knocked it off on a rainy Friday afternoon. It has to sound easy. When you can do it, it helps tremendously because it’s a thing that forces kids to read on. You have this unconsummated feeling if you stop.
-‘The Lorax’ book was intended to be propaganda.
-Preachers in pulpits talked about what a great message is in the book. No matter what you do, somebody always imputes meaning into your books.
-I stay out of politics because if I begin thinking too much about politics, I’ll probably… drop writing children’s books and become a political cartoonist again.
-I am not a consecutive writer.
-Whenever things go a bit sour in a job I’m doing, I always tell myself, ‘You can do better than this.’
-So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads.
-You have to be a speedy reader because there’s so so much to read.
-You can get help from teachers, but you are going to have to learn a lot by yourself, sitting alone in a room.
-It is better to know how to learn than to know.
-If you keep your eyes open enough, oh, the stuff you will learn. Oh, the most wonderful stuff.
-Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try!
-There’s no limit to how much you’ll know, depending how far beyond zebra you go.
-Words and pictures are yin and yang. Married, they produce a progeny more interesting than either parent.
-What it really said to me is how hard the people at our school work, … All of our employees who work here are working hard to do what’s right for our kids.
-I would not like them here or there. I would not like them anywhere. I do not like green eggs and ham. I do not like them Sam I Am.
-We looked! Then we saw him. Step in on the mat! We looked! And we saw him! The Cat in the Hat!
-My wonderful weapon, the Jigger-Rock Snatchem, will fling ‘em right back just as quick as we catch ‘em.
-So, on beyond Z! It’s high time you were shown. That you really don’t know. All there is to be known.
-Just go. Go. Go! I don’t care how. You can go by foot. You can go by cow.
-And that is a story that no one can beat, When I say that I saw it on Mulberry Street.
-And turtles, of course… all the turtles are FREE. As turtles and, maybe, ALL creatures should be.
