Dr. Seuss (American writer and cartoonist, Ted Geisel) holding “The Cat in The Hat” (1957)
18 Facts about Dr. Seuss
- On March 3rd, 2021, six Dr. Seuss books were banned. Dropped by Dr. Seuss Enterprises, Amazon, Ebay, and many other retailers cancelled sales of Dr. Seuss books under the premise that the six removed titles contain racist imagery and insensitive material. Here you can view and read the six discontinued Dr. Seuss books archived online: And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, If I Ran the Zoo, McElligots Pool, On Beyond Zebra, Scrambled Eggs Super!, and The Cat’s Quizzer – Are you Smarter than the Cat in the Hat?
2. Interestingly, the day Amazon cancelled Dr. Seuss, his catalog held 9 out of the Top 10 titles in Amazon’s bestseller list and 24 out of the top 27. Today, Adolf Hitler’s book, Mein Kampf, is still for sale on Amazon. Go figure!
3. National Read Across America Day is observed in the U.S. on March 2, —the birthday of Dr. Seuss. Joe Biden has since removed all mention of Dr. Seuss from the initiative.
4. National awards, honors, and civic recognition for Dr. Seuss’s outstanding contribution to children’s literature are numerous. Two Academy Awards, two Emmy’s, a Peabody, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal, an Inkpot, and the Pulitzer Prize are but a few he earned during his career.
5. Ted Geisel’s authoring, writing, and drawing career spanned the late 1920s to 1991.
6. There is a star for Dr. Seuss on The Hollywood Walk of Fame on the 6500 block of Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California.
7. Published in 1961, The Sneetches and Other Stories is a Dr. Seuss book that portrays racial inequality through four stories of tolerance, compromise, and diversity.
8. March 1, 2013: New York’s Law School Law Review: CIVIL SOCIETY THROUGH THE WRITINGS OF DR. SEUSS discuss his book, The Lorax, and the Corporate Role, as it portrays business in society. Civil and human rights themes are discussed at length and captured on video by law scholars exploring identity, personal rights, and racial literacy in two Dr. Seuss books: The Sneetches, and Yertle the Turtle.
9. Theodor S. Geisel wrote the post-war documentary, Design for Death which won 1947’s Academy Award for Documentary Feature. The “documentary of fabulous proportions” received mixed reviews although its “general point that too much control by a few people is a dangerous thing” was deemed valid by those who watched it.
10. Theodor Seuss Geisel used the pen names Dr. Seuss, Theo. LeSieg (Geisel reversed), Alexander Abingdon, and Rosetta Stone.
11. Random House Children’s Books, Seussville.com, is an interactive website for children, parents, and educators to access Dr. Seuss audiobooks, books, videos, and resources.
12. Dr. Seuss children’s books are so popular there is The Amazing World of Dr. Seuss Museum in Massachusetts, a Seuss Landing theme park attraction at Universal Studios Orland, a Carnival Cruise Lines cruise called Seuss at Sea, and a live theater musical production called “How the Grinch Stole Christmas!”.
13. The Lorax by Dr. Seuss holds the 2021 #20 spot on Time’s 100 Best Children’s Book’s of All Time.
14. The critically acclaimed Dr. Seuss book Horton Hatches the Egg was first published in 1940—fourteen years before Horton Hears a Who. Who would have known?
15. The first Dr. Seuss book was originally published in 1931-32 by The Viking Press as four separate, humorous stories written by Alexander Abingdon(a Geisel pseudonym). But it wasn’t until 1941 when Reader’s League of America included all four stories, publishing the hilarious work as A Pocketful of Boners, that the raging tome climbed the charts putting the popular WWII era paperback in with the top sellers of 1945. But wait, there’s more…the public was so tickled with Dr. Seuss’s illustrative joke-book that he didn’t stop until he released an impressive series of Boner’s including 1952’s Bigger and Better Boners. Ok,..moving on now.
16. The Cat in The Hat by Dr. Seuss has sold over 10.5 million copies. That’s only 2.5 million less than Earnest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea.
17. There are at least 14 books written by Ted Geisel that he did not illustrate.
18. Dr. Seuss children’s books have sold more than 222 million copies in more than 15 different languages making him one of the world’s most beloved storyteller’s of all time.