Happy birthday, Dr. Seuss! The famous children’s author (not to mention cartoonist, animator, book publisher, and artist) would have been 107 years old today.
Born Theodor Seuss Geisel in Springfield, Massachusetts, he published 44 children’s books, which are known for their whimsical and imaginative characters, situations, and meter. He is possibly best known for "Green Eggs and Ham", "The Cat in the Hat", "One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish", and "How the Grinch Stole Christmas".
In 1954, Life magazine published a report saying that children were not learning to read because their books were boring. William Ellsworth Spaulding, director of the Houghton Mifflin education department, took this to heart by compiling a list of 348 words he thought imperative for first graders to learn. He then told Geisel to shorten the list to 250 and challenged him to "bring back a book children can’t put down". Nine months later Geisel published "The Cat in the Hat", which included 236 of the original words given to him.
Geisel has written under the famed pen name Dr. Seuss, as well as Theo LeSieg and Rosetta Stone. Although he died in September 1991, his birthday (March 2) has been adopted as the annual National Read Across America Day.
