Essay About Dr. Seuss And Theodor Seuss Geisel

The Man Behind the Hat
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The Man Behind the Hat
“More and more tension as if over inflating a balloon until the readers
can not stand waiting for the “pop!” and then there is no pop, just deflation
of the balloon(Hurst 2).” A perfect example of a writer named Theodor
Seuss Geisel, also known as “Dr. Seuss.” A man who some think created,
“the world of imagination” as we know it in childrens literature. Theodor
Seuss Geisel wrote and illustrated many books and sold millions of copies. He
created catch phrases and captured the eyes of children all over the world.
What made this man, Dr. Seuss such a well-known author by children and
adults until this day?
Theodor Seuss Geisel, “Dr. Seuss,” was born March 2, 1904 in
Springfield, Massachusetts. His father was the curator of the Forest Park
Zoo. Seuss graduated from Dartmouth College. After his graduation Seuss
started a career in advertising. He created ads and drew cartoons for Flit, a
pesticide company. Between making cartoons for Flit and his father working
at the zoo, animals and ideas became some of the basis of his later work
(Hurst 1).
Dr. Seuss first book was To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street
(Hurst 1 ). He used a pen name, “Dr. Seuss.” He wanted to use his real name
for more serious work. Seuss was Theodors middle name and he put Dr. in
the front because his father had always wanted him to be a doctor
(Hurst 1).
The Cat in the Hat series started when he was reading an article by
the novelist John Hersey who observed what the “young readers” used in
school were ridiculous. Seuss was told that he could only use words from the
Dolch reading list. So he took 223 words and created a fun and exciting book
worth children reading (Hurst 2). Green Eggs and Ham, which was written in
50 vocabulary words, became the third best-selling book in the English
Language. After The Cat in the Hat, Seuss printed 31 more childrens books
and continued to receive many honors, including a Pulitzer Prize Award in
1984 and several Emmies. He wrote and illustrated around 47 books and sold
over 100 million copies in almost 18 different languages (Robinson 1). Seuss
and his wife, Helen Palmer, created a whole line of beginner books for young
children.
Geisels work were like journeys into nonsense. Magical worlds of
truffula trees, ziffs and zuffs and nerkles and nerds, where top hatted cats
ran rampant through young childrens homes while parents were away. His
illustrations are fascinating in that he really only drew one human face. All
his people looked alike with minor adjustments. His creatures look very plain
and simple until you try to imitate them. His landscapes were remembered for
their creation of distance. His rhymes were simple but yet too different
from what everyone was used to seeing. Most of the time his stories
included messages of important issues, from internationalism to
environmentalism. In his 1984 best seller, the Butter Battle Book, he had a