Dr. Seuss birthday: Childrens book author would have been 105

Born Theodor Seuss Geisel on March 2, 1904 in Springfield, Massachusetts, the author first became a writer while still a freshman in Dartmouth college while working on the 'Dartmouth Jack-o-Lantern' and eventually became editor-in-chief.

But just how did he get that pen name? He was caught by the school administration while throwing a drinking party during Prohibition and school wanted him to resign from his extracurricular activities. He used his noodle and began sign his work with moniker 'Dr. Seuss' so he could continue to work with the Jack-o-Lantern.

Seuss populated his odd and fanciful kiddie books with a hybrid bestiary of Wockets, Whos, Grinches, bunches of Hunches, Bar-ba-loots, red fish, blue fish, and a fox in socks. The stories had an incantatory, rhythmic pace, and are full of tongue-twisters, word play, and highly inventive vocabulary.

His most famous book includes "The Cat and the Hat" (1957), a story about two children who find themselves home alone with a roguish, hat-wearing feline who is a study in bad behavior. With only 223 vocabulary words and much repetition, it was ideally suited for beginning readers and became a lively alternative to the wooden dullness of the "See Spot run" primers.

"Green Eggs and Ham" (1960) managed with a vocabulary of just fifty words to tell the story of a Seuss creature's relentless crusade to introduce a hapless furry character to a revolting dish.


Source: nj.com