Plain-Belly Sneetches, South-Going Zax, Vipper of Vipp, Yeps, Bippo-No-Bungus, Conrad Cornelius o’Donaldo’Dell, Dawf...recognise any of them? If you do, you can rightfully call yourself a Dr. Seuss-buff.
They are characters from books by Dr. Seuss. The master of nonsensical rhymes, fantastical tales and whimsical characters, he is also the creator of the more popular characters like Cat in the Hat, Horton, and the Grinch.
Dr. Seuss is credited with writing and illustrating more than 60 books some of which feature among the most popular children’s books of all time lists.
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Such is his contribution that when the National Education Association advocated for a day to celebrate reading in the U.S., it started the Read Across America campaign in 1998, and decided to hold it on the same day as Dr. Seuss’ birthday — March 02. Ever since, the day has also come to be known as Dr. Seuss Day.
Love for stories
Born in 1904, in the U.S., Theodor Seuss Geisel started his career as an illustrator and cartoonist for magazines and ad agencies.
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Geisel’s pen name came about because of an incident while in college at Dartmouth College. ‘Ted’ — as he was known among friends and family — and nine of his friends were punished for violation of a few college rules. One of his punishments included being stripped of his editorship of Jack-O-Lantern — the college’s humour magazine, where he published his cartoons. But that didn’t stop him from contributing. To evade punishment, he began publishing cartoons under different names like L. Pasteur, T. Seuss, and Seuss. When he started working as a cartoonist for magazines, he signed it with the mock-scholarly title of “Dr. Theophrastus Seuss” which he eventually shortened to Dr. Seuss.
Dr. Seuss’s first book was And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, which was published in 1937. In the book, a boy named Marco describes a parade of imaginary people and vehicles travelling along Mulberry Street. He dreams up an elaborate fantasy story that he plans to tell his father at the end of his walk. But once home, Marco decides to tell his father what he actually sees on his walk — a horse and wagon.
According to Dr. Seuss, the book was rejected around 25 times. Just when he was about to throw it away, he ran into his former classmate on Madison Avenue in New York, who worked as a juvenile editor of Vanguard Press, which eventually signed him on. “That’s one of the reasons I believe in luck. If I’d been going down the other side of Madison Avenue, I would be in the dry cleaning business today!” he said, of this lucky encounter.
Arguably his most famous book, Cat in the Hat, came out in 1954 . He was inspired to write it after reading an article that children weren’t reading much because they found most children’s books boring. In the book, he uses 236 words set in rhyme that are deemed important for first-graders to learn.
Dr. Seuss was also known for tackling several social and political issues like environmentalism, consumerism, racism, and authoritarianism through his charters and plot.
Some of his other famous books include Horton Hears a Who! , How the Grinch Stole Christmas! , Green Eggs and Ham , and One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish .
Oh, the Places You'll Go! , a book about life and its challenges, published in 1990 was the last book published before Dr. Seuss’s death.
On Dr. Seuss Day, it is customary to read your favourite book — one of Dr. Seuss’s books or any book, for that matter. The point of the day and what the author advocated for was to discover your love for reading.
“Fill your house with stacks of books, in all the crannies and all the nooks.” – Dr. Seuss.