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Where and when did Dr. Seuss grow up?
Early Life. Geisel was born on March 2, 1904, in Springfield, Massachusetts. His father, Theodor Robert Geisel, was a successful brewmaster; his mother was Henrietta Seuss Geisel. At age 18, Geisel left home to attend Dartmouth College, where he became the editor in chief of its humor magazine, Jack-O-Lantern.
Where was Dr. Seuss born and where did he live?
Seuss, pseudonym of Theodor Seuss Geisel, (born March 2, 1904, Springfield, Massachusetts, U.S.—died September 24, 1991, La Jolla, California), American writer and illustrator of immensely popular children's books, which were noted for their nonsense words, playful rhymes, and unusual creatures.
Where was Dr. Seuss when he was born?
Springfield, MassachusettsTheodor Geisel, more commonly known as Dr. Seuss, was born on March 2, 1904, in Springfield, Massachusetts.
Where did Dr. Seuss live for most of his life?
There are two cities synonymous with Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss: Springfield, Massachusetts, where he was born, and San Diego, where he perfected his craft as a children's book author and artist. Seuss lived in La Jolla from 1948 until his death in 1991.
How many words did Dr. Seuss invent?
Seuss—seemed to intuitively understand. The researchers took 65 made-up words from Dr. Seuss's books—like “wumbus” and “yuzz-a-ma-tuzz”—and ran them through the entropy formula. They found that Dr.
How do you pronounce Dr. Seuss?
According to an article published in Slate, and apparently well-documented elsewhere, the “correct” pronunciation as Dr. Seuss intended is not Seuss-that-rhymes with “Zeus,” but “Soice,” as in a word that rhymes with “voice.” This all seems to be technically correct, but should you actually change the way you say it?
What are 3 facts about Dr. Seuss?
8 things you didn't know about Dr. SeussThing 1. ... Thing 2. ... The pen name “Dr. ... He joined the war effort.He was a successful ad man before a children's author.His all-time best-selling book was created on a bet.He gifted the English language with “nerd” and redefined “grinch.”More items...•
Did Dr. Seuss have a good childhood?
A PROSPEROUS & PATRIOTIC CHILDHOOD Seuss grew up in the midst of a bustling, prosperous extended family. A child during World War I, Ted acquired a sense of patriotism that would remain with him his entire life. As a Scout, he worked to sell U.S. War Bonds.
Which Dr. Seuss books are worth the most money?
Values for Dr. Seuss First Edition BooksYearBook TitleVG+1950If I Ran The Zoo$2,4001953Scrambled Eggs Super$1,6001954Horton Hears A Who$2,8001955On Beyond Zebra$1,20024 more rows
What happened to The Lorax tree?
Seuss' "The Lorax" has fallen over. An iconic Cypress tree located in the picturesque seaside town of La Jolla, California, has apparently fallen over, according to local reports. The tree is more than an imposing plant — it inspired an important story by celebrated children's author Dr.
Where is The Lorax?
ThneedvillePlot. Twelve-year-old Ted Wiggins lives in Thneedville, a walled city where all vegetation and plant life is artificial. Ted is infatuated with a teenage girl named Audrey and decides to impress her with a "real tree."
What street did Dr. Seuss live on?
74 Fairfield StreetThe Springfield Museums are in the final stages of purchasing the childhood home of Theodor Geisel (a.k.a. Dr. Seuss), located at 74 Fairfield Street in Springfield, MA, through support provided by the Dr. Seuss Foundation.
What did Dr. Seuss do in his childhood?
A PROSPEROUS & PATRIOTIC CHILDHOOD Seuss grew up in the midst of a bustling, prosperous extended family. A child during World War I, Ted acquired a sense of patriotism that would remain with him his entire life. As a Scout, he worked to sell U.S. War Bonds.
Where did Theodor Seuss Geisel live?
La JollaSpringfieldOxfordHanoverDr. Seuss/Places lived
When was Dr. Seuss born?
March 2, 1904Dr. Seuss / Date of birth
Is Doctor Seuss dead?
September 24, 1991Dr. Seuss / Date of death
What college did Geisel go to?
Geisel’s favorite English teacher urged him to apply to Dartmouth College, and in 1921 Geisel was accepted. Admired for his silliness, Geisel drew cartoons for the college humor magazine Jack-O-Lantern .
Where was Geisel born?
Geisel was born in Springfield, Massachusetts. His father, Theodor Robert Geisel, helped manage his father’s brewery, and in 1909 was appointed to the Springfield Park Board.
How long did Geisel travel?
After one year of school, Geisel left Oxford and traveled Europe for eight months, doodling curious animals and wondering what kind of a job he could get as a doodler of zany beasts.
What did Geisel do?
Geisel’s work included drawing cartoons and advertisements with his unusual, zany creatures.
Why did Geisel work harder?
Spending more time on his cartoons than he should, his grades began to falter. After Geisel’s father informed his son how unhappy his grades made him , Geisel worked harder and became Jack-O-Lantern ’s editor-in-chief his senior year.
Why was Geisel ridiculed?
While his childhood seemed idyllic, all was not easy. During World War I (1914–1919), Geisel’s peers ridiculed him for being of German ancestry. To prove his American patriotism, Geisel became one of the top U.S. Liberty Bond sellers with the Boy Scouts.
What happened to Geisel in the magazine?
However, Geisel's position at the paper ended abruptly when he was caught drinking alcohol (it was still Prohibition and buying alcohol was illegal). Unable to submit to the magazine as punishment, Geisel came up with a loophole, writing and drawing under a pseudonym: "Seuss."
Where did the Geisel family live?
Aside from Theodor and Henrietta Geisel, several other members of the family moved to the Forest Park neighborhood around this time. Theodor’s parents, Theodor and Christine, had moved to a house nearby on Sumner Avenue in 1901, where they also lived with their two youngest children, Adolf and Christine. Henrietta’s mother, Margaretha Seuss, moved to Forest Park around 1908, purchasing a house just down the street from here at 20 Fairfield Street, and she lived there with her daughter Bertha and Bertha’s husband, William H. Klein.
What happened to Ted's mother?
While Ted’s literary career was just beginning, tragedy struck in his family in 1931, when his mother died at the age of 52 from a brain tumor. That same year, though, his father Theodor began a new career when he was appointed as the city parks superintendent.
How did Ted's mother die?
While Ted’s literary career was just beginning, tragedy struck in his family in 1931, when his mother died at the age of 52 from a brain tumor. That same year, though, his father Theodor began a new career when he was appointed as the city parks superintendent. He had been involved in the city’s park system since 1909, when he began serving on the parks commission, and he would go on to serve as superintendent for 30 years, until his retirement in 1961.
Who owned Russell's house in the South End?
However, Russell did not live here for very long, because in 1906 the house was purchased by Theodor R. Geisel, a brewery manager who had previously lived on Howard Street in the South End. He was about 26 years old at the time, and he worked for the Liberty Brewing Company, which was owned by his father, Theodor Geisel. He and his wife Henrietta had been married in 1901, and by 1906 they had three young children: four-year-old Margaretha, two-year-old Theodor (“Ted”), and newborn Henrietta. However, Henrietta, who was born the same year that the family moved in, died of pneumonia in 1907, when she was just 18 months old, and her funeral was held here in this house.
Overview
Theodor Seuss Geisel was an American children's author and cartoonist. He is known for his work writing and illustrating more than 60 books under the pen name Dr. Seuss (/suːs, zuːs/, ). His work includes many of the most popular children's books of all time, selling over 600 million copies and being translated into more than 20 languages by the time of his death.
Life and career
Geisel was born and raised in Springfield, Massachusetts, the son of Henrietta (née Seuss) and Theodor Robert Geisel. His father managed the family brewery and was later appointed to supervise Springfield's public park system by Mayor John A. Denison after the brewery closed because of Prohibition. Mulberry Street in Springfield, made famous in his first children's book And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, is near his boyhood home on Fairfield Street. The famil…
Illness, death, and posthumous honors
Geisel died of cancer on September 24, 1991, at his home in the La Jolla community of San Diego at the age of 87. His ashes were scattered in the Pacific Ocean. On December 1, 1995, four years after his death, University of California, San Diego's University Library Building was renamed Geisel Library in honor of Geisel and Audrey for the generous contributions that they made to the library and their devotion to improving literacy.
Pen names and pronunciations
Geisel's most famous pen name is regularly pronounced /suːs/, an anglicized pronunciation inconsistent with his German surname (the standard German pronunciation is German pronunciation: [ˈzɔʏ̯s]). He himself noted that it rhymed with "voice" (his own pronunciation being /sɔɪs/). Alexander Laing, one of his collaborators on the Dartmouth Jack-O-Lantern, wrote of it:
You're wrong as the deuce And you shouldn't rejoice If you're calling him Seuss. He pronounces i…
Geisel's most famous pen name is regularly pronounced /suːs/, an anglicized pronunciation inconsistent with his German surname (the standard German pronunciation is German pronunciation: [ˈzɔʏ̯s]). He himself noted that it rhymed with "voice" (his own pronunciation being /sɔɪs/). Alexander Laing, one of his collaborators on the Dartmouth Jack-O-Lantern, wrote of it:
You're wrong as the deuce And you shouldn't rejoice If you're calling him Seuss. He pronounces i…
Political views
Geisel was a liberal Democrat and a supporter of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal. His early political cartoons show a passionate opposition to fascism, and he urged action against it both before and after the United States entered World War II. His cartoons portrayed the fear of communism as overstated, finding greater threats in the House Committee on Unamerican Act…
Poetic meters
Geisel wrote most of his books in anapestic tetrameter, a poetic meter employed by many poets of the English literary canon. This is often suggested as one of the reasons that Geisel's writing was so well received.
Anapestic tetrameter consists of four rhythmic units called anapests, each composed of two weak syllables followed by one strong syllable (the beat); often, the first weak syllable is omitted, or a…
Artwork
Geisel's early artwork often employed the shaded texture of pencil drawings or watercolors, but in his children's books of the postwar period, he generally made use of a starker medium—pen and ink—normally using just black, white, and one or two colors. His later books, such as The Lorax, used more colors.
Geisel's style was unique—his figures are often "rounded" and somewhat droo…
Bibliography
Geisel wrote more than 60 books over the course of his long career. Most were published under his well-known pseudonym Dr. Seuss, though he also authored more than a dozen books as Theo LeSieg and one as Rosetta Stone. His books have topped many bestseller lists, sold over 600 million copies, and been translated into more than 20 languages. In 2000, Publishers Weekly compiled a list of the best-selling children's books of all time; of the top 100 hardcover books, 16 …
Early Years
Dartmouth College and A Pseudonym
- Geisel’s favorite English teacher urged him to apply to Dartmouth College, and in 1921 Geisel was accepted. Admired for his silliness, Geisel drew cartoons for the college humor magazine Jack-O-Lantern. Spending more time on his cartoons than he should, his grades began to falter. After Geisel’s father informed his son how unhappy his grades made him, Geisel worked harder and b…
Advertising Career
- Upon returning to the United States, Geisel was able to freelance a few cartoons in the Saturday Evening Post. He signed his work “Dr. Theophrastus Seuss” and then later shortened it to “Dr. Seuss.” At the age of 23, Geisel got a job as a cartoonist for Judgemagazine in New York at $75 per week and was able to marry his Oxford sweetheart, Helen Palmer. Geisel’s work included dra…
Children’s Author
- Geisel and Helen loved to travel. While on a ship to Europe in 1936, Geisel made up a limerick to match the grinding of the ship’s engine rhythm as it struggled against rough seas. Six months later, after perfecting the related story and adding drawings about a boy’s untruthful walk home from school, Geisel shopped his children's book to publishers. During the winter of 1936–1937, …
WWII Cartoons
- After publishing a large number of political cartoons to PMmagazine, Geisel joined the U.S. Army in 1942. The Army placed him in the Information and Education Division, working with Academy Award-winning director Frank Capra at a leased Fox studio in Hollywood known as Fort Fox. While working with Capra, Captain Geisel wrote several training films for the military, which earned Gei…
'The Cat in The Hat' and More Popular Books
- With World War II over, Geisel returned to children's stories and in 1950 wrote an animated cartoon titled "Gerald McBoing-Boing" about a child who makes noises instead of words. The cartoon won an Academy Award for Cartoon Short Film. In 1954, Geisel was presented with a new challenge. When journalist John Hersey published an article in Lifemagazine stating that childre…
Awards, Heartache, and Controversy
- Dr. Seuss was awarded seven honorary doctorates (which he often joked made him Dr. Dr. Seuss) and the 1984 Pulitzer Prize. Three of his books—"McElligot’s Pool" (1948), "Bartholomew and the Oobleck" (1950), and "If I Ran the Zoo" (1951)—won Caldecott Honor Medals. All the awards and successes, however, couldn't help cure Helen, who had been suffering for a decade from a numb…
Death and Legacy
- Geisel's final book, "Oh, the Places You’ll Go" (1990), was on The New York Timesbestseller list for more than two years and remains a very popular book to give as a gift at graduations. Just a year after his last book was published, Geisel died in 1991 at the age of 87 after suffering from throat cancer. The fascination with Geisel's characters and silly words continues. While many of Dr. Se…
Sources
- Andrews, Colman. “Don't Be Obtuse, Get to Know Dr. Seuss.” USA Today, Gannett Satellite Information Network, 30 Nov. 2018.
- “Siblings.” Seuss in Springfield, 16 June 2015.
- “Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss).” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation.
- Jones, Brian Jay. Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisel and the Making of an American Imagi…
- Andrews, Colman. “Don't Be Obtuse, Get to Know Dr. Seuss.” USA Today, Gannett Satellite Information Network, 30 Nov. 2018.
- “Siblings.” Seuss in Springfield, 16 June 2015.
- “Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss).” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation.
- Jones, Brian Jay. Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisel and the Making of an American Imagination. Penguin, 2019.
