Did March 2 pass by without a glance from you?  It did for me as well.  Much to my chagrin, I have learned that March 2 is National Reading Across America Day.  Why March 2?  Well, it happens to be the birthday of one of the best-known children’s author, Theodore Geisel, or Dr. Seuss.

Recently, on July 14, 2015, the New York Times Crossword devoted an entire puzzle theme to Dr. Seuss.  While I have read and reread many of his books, I thought it was high time to learn a bit more about him.

Theodore Seuss Geisel was born on March 2, 1904.  As a young man, he attended Dartmouth, becoming the editor-in-chief of the college humor magazine, the Jack-O-Lantern.  After being fired from the position for drinking on campus, he wrote articles with the pen name, Seuss.  After a brief time at Oxford, Seuss decided to drop his pursuit of English literature and stick to drawing.

During the Depression and World War II he supported himself by drawing for such corporations as Standard Oil, General Electric, NBC and many others.  In 1936, he wrote his first book, And To Think I Saw It on Mulberry Street.  By his accounts, he received well over thirty rejection letters for this manuscript.  Fed up with the process, he was returning home to burn the entire thing when he ran into a friend from college who was working for Vanguard Publishing.

In 1954, he read a report from Life magazine that said that literacy in the United States was declining because many of the children’s books were too boring.  William Ellsworth Spaulding, the head of the education division at Houghton Mifflin, compiled a list of 348 words that he felt every child should know.  He approached Seuss with the task of reducing it to 250.  He then challenged him to write a book using only those words and to make it a book that children could not resist.  The result of this challenge was The Cat in the Hat.

While he received numerous awards throughout his career, Seuss received neither the Caldecott nor the Newberry Medal.  When Dartmouth College awarded him an honorary doctorate, he began to write Dr. in front of his name – because his father had always wanted him to pursue medicine.

Just last week, it was announced that a new Seuss book was being released.  His widow found the manuscript, complete with line drawings and brought it to his long-time editor who complied the book, including coloring the drawings.  The finished product, What Pet Should I Get? is being released this month.

And the name we all know him by – Seuss?  Most of us have been saying it wrong all these years.  He anglicized it because it was easier for people to say, plus it rhymed with Mother Goose.  So how do you say it?  Here’s a poem from a collaborator on the Dartmouth Jack-O-Lantern:

You’re as wrong as the deuce

And You shouldn’t rejoice

If you’re calling him Seuss,

He pronounces it Soice.