Dr Seuss's Birthday

Theodor Seuss Geisel is better known to the world as the beloved Dr Seuss. Dr. Seuss has captivated over four generations of children and parents alike, all in the while helping millions of children learn to read. Dr. Seuss wrote and illustrated 44 books, which have been translated into 20 different languages making him the best –selling children’s author of all times. Today, his books and characters remain to be very influential in young children’s lives. Theodore Seuss Geisel was born on Howard Street in Springfield, Massachusetts on March 2, 1904.  As a teenager, Theodore left Springfield to attend Dartmouth College. While at Dartmouth, he became the editor-in-chief of the Jack-O-Lantern, which was Dartmouth’s humor magazine. After Geisel was caught throwing a drinking party which violated Prohibition laws, the school made him resign from all extracurricular  activities. He continued to work on the Jack-O-Lantern without the schools knowledge by signing his work with the pseudonym “Seuss”.  After graduating from Dartmouth in 1925, he went onto Oxford University with the intention of acquiring a doctorate in literature. While attending Oxford he met his first wife, Helen Palmer, whom he wed in 1927. After returning back to the United States, Geisel began publishing cartoons and humorous articles in major magazines such as Judge, Vanity, Fair and Liberty; however most of his work during his early career was to create advertising campaigns for Standard Oil.  After a while, Geisel began to grow frustrated in the advertising world and in his spare time he began writing and illustrating an alphabet book for children. It was an exciting project for Geisel but after several publishers turned him down he was discouraged from writing for years. While on a vacation cruise in 1936, he conceived the idea for his first children’s book. Written and illustrated by Dr. Seuss, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street was finally published in 1937, but not after being rejected by more than 20 different publishers.