Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss

Theodor Seuss Geisel was born on March 2, 1904 in Springfield, MA.

             A major change in the books offered to struggling beginning readers occurred in 1957 when William Spaulding, director of Houghton Mifflin’s education division challenged their trade publishing company's most popular picture book writer, Theodor Seuss Geisel – who wrote under the pen name Dr. Seuss – to write a book based on the list of 400 sight words a first grader should know. These words could not be sounded out with phonics, but had to be memorized by the new reader and included “the, and, play, run, I, and is, and the numbers one and two. 

Spaulding demanded, “Write me a story […] that first graders can’t put down.”  

Geisel took over six months to craft an exuberant, rhyming easy reader – Seussian style – entitled The Cat in the Hat using 237 of the suggested words. The result revolutionized the reading world. 

Geisel followed this with The Cat in the Hat Comes Back and Random House’s Beginner Books series was born. (The education division's version of the book, with a dull, orange cover, stopped being published after a few years because schools, libraries, and bookstores preferred the more colorful trade version.) 

HarperCollins's I Can Read line began in the same year with the publication of Else Holmelund Minarik’s Little Bear, illustrated by Maurice Sendak. These three books are still in print and those lines of easy readers are still going strong today.

Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss

Can you believe he'd be 110 years old?   (if he were still alive)

Here's a link to an article in the Denver Post about Theodor Seuss Geisel, who is known to the world as Dr. Seuss.  (If it's still online)

And here's a link to the national Read Across America, a celebration of reading held every year on Dr. Seuss's birthday. If you click on the pictures to the right, you'll get to their Pinterest page with printable copies of all of their handouts.

And another link to Seussville, the web page brought to you by Random House Children's Books, featuring Read Across America activities.

Or you could grab and listen to these audio clips of Dr. Seuss books at the Audiobook Blog read by some of my favorite actors.  After you click, scroll down the page to see the links.

Celebrate Reading Today!

How to write -- Advice from Dr. Seuss

Ted Geisel (a.k.a. Dr. Seuss) had this to say about the writing process when he discussed writing the very first Beginning Reader -- The Cat in the Hat.
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I spent half a year working [on this limited word story].

When I came up, I solved my problem by writing "The Cat in the Hat." How I did this is no trade secret. The method I used is the same method you use when you sit down to make apple stroodle without stroodles.

You forget all about time. You go to work with what you have! You take your limited, uninteresting ingredients (in my case 223 words) and day and night, month after month, you mix them up into thousands of different combinations. You bake a batch. You taste it. Then you hurl it out of the window. Until finally one night, when it is darkest just before down, a plausible stroodle-less stroodle begins to take shape before your eyes!

Since "The Cat" I've been trying to invent some easier method.  But I am afraid the above procedure will always be par for the course. At least it will be just as long as the course is laid out on a word list. (New York Times Book Review, November 17, 1957, Quoted in the book by Caroline M. Smith,  Dr. Seuss The Cat Behind the Hat, revised edition. Chicago: Chaseart Companies, 2012.

Dr. Seuss Complains

(Actually the title of this piece, sent to me a long time ago by another library worker, is Dr. Seuss Explains. But my flanging fingers typed 'complains,' instead. weird.

I'm sorry that I don't know who the true author is, but since Dr. Seuss's birthday is coming up soon, I thought I'd post it now. (We need to replace the words "floppy disk" with any current means of storing computer files in order to update it.)


Dr. Seuss Explains Why Computers Sometimes Crash

If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port, and the bus is interrupted at a very last resort, and the access of the memory makes your floppy disk abort, then the socket packet pocket has an error to report.

If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash, and the double-clicking icon puts your window in the trash, and your data is corrupted 'cause the index doesn't hash, then your situation's hopeless and your system's gon'na crash!

If the label on the cable on the table at your house says the network is connected to the button on your mouse, but your packets want to tunnel to another protocol, that's repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall, and your screen is all distorted by the side effects of gauss, so your icons in the window are as wavy as a souse; then you may as well reboot and go out with a bang, 'cuz sure as I'm a poet, that baby's gonna hang!

When the copy of your floppy's getting sloppy in the disk, and the macro code instructions cause unnecessary risk, then you'll have to flash the memory and you'll want to RAM your ROM then quickly turn off the computer and be sure to tell your Mom!

Well............. that certainly clears things up for ME.