It was a few years later that I discovered just why trees here looked like those crazy trees in his books.
1. He lived in La Jolla, a suburb of San Diego.2. San Diego is actually a desert/ chaparral area, not normally suited to trees.
3. Therefore trees in San Diego need to be watered.
3A - trees take up water with their roots and expire them through their leaves.
3B - in order to use less water watering trees, the people in San Diego constantly trim their trees to create less branch and leaf area.
3C - ERGO -- Dr. Seuss trees.
(for a description of how and why trees were imported into the water-parched San Diego area, I refer you to the book, The Tree Lady, The True Story of How One Tree-Loving Woman Changed a City Forever by H. Joseph Hopkins.)
