On March 2, 1904, in Springfield, Massachusetts, a baby named Theodor Seuss Geisel arrived. Nobody guessed that the kid scribbling silly animals in the margins of his schoolbooks would grow up to invent some of the most beloved characters in children's literature. He loved the tigers, bears, and elephants at the local zoo where his dad worked, and he started filling notebooks with creatures that were part real, part wonderfully made-up.
As an adult, Ted began signing his cartoons "Dr. Seuss" using his middle name (which was also his mom's last name). His first book, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, was rejected by 27 publishers before someone finally said yes in 1937. Then came The Cat in the Hat in 1957, written using only 236 different words to help kids learn to read. Green Eggs and Ham used just 50. The Grinch, Horton, the Lorax, and the Sneetches all bounced out of his imagination next.
By the time he passed away in 1991, Dr. Seuss had written more than 60 books that sold over 600 million copies in dozens of languages. His birthday is now Read Across America Day, when classrooms everywhere celebrate by reading his wild, rhyming stories aloud. Every time a kid sounds out "I do not like green eggs and ham," they're hanging out with the wonderful weirdo from Springfield who proved that books for beginners could be the silliest, smartest things on the shelf.
