Dr. Seuss: Reading is an Act of Imagination (1904-1991)

When he celebrated his 75^th birthday on March 2, 1979, not many people knew who Ted Geisel was. But everybody knew Dr. Seuss. Seuss was simply Geisel’s middle name; the Dr. part he added when he failed to earn the degree at Oxford. The main reason that I picked ‘Seuss’ professionally is that I still thought I was one day going to write the Great American Novel. I was saving my real name for that—and it looks like I still am.” At 75 Dr. Seuss said: “It’s getting awful, because I meet old, old people, who can scarcely walk, and they say, ‘I was brought up on your books.’”

Dr. Seuss is a favorite of three generations of readers. The kids he first wrote for read his books to their kids and then to their grand kids. Dr. Seuss is America’s most imaginative children’s writer and he is still wildly popular today. Recently a new grandmother said to me: “I can hardly wait for the baby to get old enough for me to be able to read Dr. Seuss to her.”

Dr. Seuss wrote and illustrated children’s books, but he had an adult literary standard. He thought that a great children’s book had to be the sort of book that adults could read with pleasure. If it couldn’t pass that test, he thought, it was not a great book. And Seuss wrote great books.

When the first Dr. Seuss book appeared in 1937, American children were learning to read from the Dick and Jane series published by Scott Forsman and Company. Actually, they were not learning to read as Rudolf Flesch showed in his 1955 book Why Johnny Can’t Read. The illiteracy of American children was suddenly a national scandal. Flesch blamed the new “look-say” method, then widely used in schools, and he advocated a return to the teaching of phonics. Others blamed television. But the deeper reason children were not learning to read was that they saw no reason to learn. Primers like Dick and Jane were dull, literal-minded, and completely lacking in imagination. Most other kids’ books were not much better.

By 1955, when Flesch’s book came out, Dr. Seuss had already written 12 books—each one full of imagination. The most recent one—also published in 1955—was On Beyond Zebra and it invited youngsters to imagine an alphabet that didn’t stop with Z. Dr. Seuss urged his young readers on:

          So, on beyond Zebra!

          Explore!

          Like Columbus!

          Discover new letters!

          Like WUM is for Wumbus,

          My high-spouting whale who lives high on a hill

          And who never comes down ‘till it’s time to refill.

          So, on beyond Z! It’s high time you were shown

         That you really don’t know all there is to be known.

Parents learned from Dr. Seuss that decoding letters on a page, whether by the look-say method or by phonics, is not reading. Reading is an act of imagination and no one writing for kids had a livelier imagination than Dr. Seuss.

In 1957 Dr. Seuss published what one critic called “the most influential first-grade reader since McGuffey.” Another reviewer described it as a “harum-scarum masterpiece and a gift to the art of reading.” The book was The Cat in the Hat. At Seuss’ death the columnist Anna Quindlen wrote about the book in the New York Times: “He is remembered for the murder of Dick and Jane, which was a mercy-killing of the highest order.” The good doctor himself had said: “Parents understand better than school people the necessity of this kind of reader.” He was right. In three years the book sold a million copies—nearly all bought by parents.

And, Dr. Seuss had a second book out in 1957: The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. Suddenly he was a wealthy celebrity, but unlike most celebrities, who are famous for being well-known, Dr. Seuss was famous, and would become even more famous, for his flights of imagination. And his imagination struck a cord with the American public

Dr. Seuss imagination took him and his readers to places like Who-ville and Solla Sollew, Mulberry Street and McElligot’s Pool, Na-Nupp and Da-Dake. His imagination was full of characters like the Grinch, Horton, Yertle, the Lorax, Thing One, and Thing Two. He imagined situations that were funny, and others that were scary. He wrote about animals not found in the zoo and he drew them in a way that made them imaginatively authentic. He wrote of eggs that were green and suggested what one could do when mother was out. In one strictly adult book he imagined not one but seven Lady Godivas!

Imagination is often thought of as prevarication, and children are scolded for exercising too much imagination to get their way. But, far from hiding the truth, imagination is often the only way to tell the truth, especially when it is a difficult truth about the way things are in the adult world but not the way they truly ought to be. A story about Seuss and money—a very adult thing—was told at his memorial service by his lawyer and it illustrates how he imagined money. Seuss’ lawyer once came to him with a proposition from a television producer who offered to pay him a vast sum to use one of his verses on a billboard. Seuss did not want his verse used that way and turned the offer down. Sometime later the lawyer came back to tell him the producer had raised the offer to the point where he would “go into The Guinness Book of World Records as the writer who received the most money ever per word.” Seuss said, “I’d rather go into The Guinness Book of World Records as the writer who refused the most money per word.”

When he turned 80 Ted Geisel said: “The kids I first wrote for are not old poops yet but they have their feet in the door.” By this time he had collected eight honorary doctorates. At 82 Dr. Seuss wrote: “I still climb Mount Everest just as often as I used to. I play polo just as often as I used to. But to walk down to the hardware store I find a little bit more difficult.” Ill and doctoring, he wrote and illustrated a second adult book, you’re Only Old Once: A Book for Obsolete Children. It was a good-humored account of the infirmities of old age and the indignities of doctoring. But at 86 his imagination was still well enough for one more book: Oh, the Places You’ll Go! Dr. Seuss was still going to places full of wonder and imagination. And more Americans than ever were following him; by the time of his death a year later the book had sold 1.5 million copies. He said that like all his books this last one was written to give people hope—and hope is something made almost entirely out of imagination.