Happy 107th Birthday Dr. Seuss!

Dr. Seuss was born in Springfield Massachusetts on March 2, 1904 and died on September 24, 1991.
He wrote many books including: The Cat in the Hat, Horton Hears a Who!, Green Eggs and Ham, How the Grinch Stole Christmas! And many more.

He went to Oxford and took classes to become a Professor, but his studies bored him so he left Oxford. But while he was there he met a girl named Helen Palmer who not only became his first wife but was a children’s author and a book editor!

After returning to the United States, Ted began a career as a cartoonist. The Saturday Evening Post and other publications published some of his early pieces, but the bulk of Ted's activity during his early career was devoted to creating advertising campaigns for Standard Oil, which he did for more than 15 years.

As World War II approached, Ted's focus shifted, and he began contributing weekly political cartoons to PM magazine. Too old for the draft, but wanting to contribute to the war effort, Ted served with Frank Capra's Signal Corps (U.S. Army) making training movies. It was here that he was introduced to the art of animation and developed a series of animated training films featuring a trainee called Private Snafu.

While Ted was continuing to contribute to Life, Vanity Fair, Judge and other magazines, Viking Press offered him a contract to illustrate a collection of children's sayings called Boners. Although the book was not a success, the illustrations received great reviews, providing Ted with his first "big break" into children's literature. Getting the first book that he both wrote and illustrated, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, published, however, required a great degree of persistence - it was rejected 27 times before being published.

The Cat in the Hat, perhaps the defining book of Ted's career, developed as part of a unique joint venture between Houghton Mifflin (Vanguard Press) and Random House. Houghton Mifflin asked Ted to write and illustrate a children's primer using only 225 "new-reader" vocabulary words. Because he was under contract to Random House, Random House obtained the trade publication rights, and Houghton Mifflin kept the school rights. With the release of The Cat in the Hat, Ted became the definitive children's book author and illustrator.

After Dr. Seuss’s wife died in 1967, Dr. Seuss married an old friend, Audrey Stone.

She not only influenced his later books, but now guards his legacy as the president of Dr. Seuss Enterprises.


At the time of his death on September 24, 1991, Ted had written and illustrated 44 children's books, including such all-time favorites as Green Eggs and Ham, Oh, the Places You'll Go, Fox in Socks, and How the Grinch Stole Christmas. His books had been translated into more than 15 languages. Over 200 million copies had found their way into homes and hearts around the world.

Besides the books, his works have provided the source for , eleven children’s TV sires, two Broadway Musicals, and two full length movies!

His honors included two Academy awards, two Emmy awards, a Peabody award, and a Pulitzer Prize.

Cat in the Hat (2003)

How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000)

Seussical the Musical on Broadway!