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Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss!

On March 2, 1904, Theodor Seuss Geisel was born in Springfield, Massachusetts. He would become an accomplished writer and illustrator, publishing articles in popular periodicals such as The Saturday Evening Post, Life and Vanity Fair. He gained a national reputation in advertising. During the World War II era, he first drew political cartoons for a left-leaning publication and then posters for the Treasury Department and the War Production Board. With his first wife, he wrote Design for Death, a study of Japanese culture that won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 1947.

But Geisel is best known for his children’s books, penned under the pseudonym “Dr. Seuss.” His first children’s book, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, was published in 1937. His last, Oh, the Places You’ll Go!, was published in 1990, just a year before his death.

The most famous of his books is (arguably) The Cat in the Hat, published in 1957. I am sure you are familiar with the story. But you may not know just how it came about.

Back in 1954, Life magazine published an article entitled "Why Do Students Bog Down on First R? A Local Committee Sheds Light on a National Problem: Reading." That article was quite critical of school primers, essentially claiming that the books schools used to teach children to read – and to love reading once they mastered the basic mechanics of it – were boring, and that the children featured in them were not relatable.

In response to that article, William Ellsworth Spaulding, then-director of the education division at Houghton Mifflin, challenged his friend Geisel to write a book that first-graders could read on their own - and not put down. The Cat in the Hat was finished nine months later. 

The Cat in the Hat was the first in the Beginner Books series that still exists today. It changed the way children learn to read, breaking down the wall that once existed between illustrated educational books and illustrated picture books when it made its way into elementary school classrooms.

Of course, things have changed over the past 50 years. But we still have concerns with our children’s underwhelming reading skills and the “boring” children’s books that many claim turn kids off reading. Like Dr. Seuss, today’s children’s book authors attempt to bring to life stories that engage students at their age and interest level, from Jon Scieszka's “Truck Town” series for young boys to Walter Dean Myers' stories on tough issues for older students in easy language. The Seuss influence lives on today, what would have been Theodor Geisel’s 107^th birthday.

The Seuss legacy also lives on in Read Across America, a day developed by the National Education Association in which every child in every community can celebrate reading. In the spirit of Seuss, the goal is to get kids excited about reading. (The Read Across America program also provides resources and activities to keep reading on the calendar 365 days a year).