Theodor Seuss Geisel's Life And Accomplishments

As you may know from the picture books I’ve published, Green Eggs and Ham, The Cat in the Hat, etc., I am Dr. Suess. Though, everyone assumes that is my name, my real name is Theodor Seuss Geisel. I was born on March 2, 1904, in Springfield, Massachusetts on Howard Street. As a family of four, my father, Theodor Robert, was a brewmaster. My mother is Henrietta Seuss Geisel, who often soothed my sister, Marnie Seuss Geisel, and me to sleep by "chanting" rhymes remembered from her youth. After I graduated highschool, I went on to graduate from Dartmouth College in 1925 as an editor-in-chief of Jack-O-Lantern, and later studied at the Lincoln College of Oxford University in England. I met my wife, Helen Palmer, who I married in 1927, when I was planning to be a professor.

When I returned to America, I decided to pursue cartooning full-time.

My articles and illustrations were published in numerous magazines, including LIFE and Vanity Fair. A cartoon that I published in the July 1927 issue of The Saturday Evening Post, earned me a staff position at the New York weekly Judge. I then worked for Standard Oil in the advertising department for 15 years, where I began drawing “Quick, Henry, the Flit!” advertisements. In 1937, I published my first book, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street. As World War II started, I found myself increasingly drawn to the war effort. Therefore I joined the United States Army Motion Picture Unit, in 1943. After the war, in 1954, I published Horton Hears a Who!. In 1957, I published The Cat in the Hat and How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, and became the president of Beginner Books. In 1960, I published Green Eggs and Ham. Unfortunately, in 1967, my wife died, a year after How the Grinch Stole Christmas! appeared on TV. Thus, in 1968, I married Audrey Dimond. In 1984, I won a special Pulitzer Prize for contribution to children’s literature. However, due to oral cancer, I passed away on September 24, 1991 in

California.