BECOMING DR. SEUSS: Theodor Geisel & Making of An American Imagination

Dutton, 2019. 1st Edition 1st Printing. Hardcover. As New/New. B&W era photo section. CONDITION: As NEW - what makes this "as new?" small red remainder dot bottom edges at spine. UNREAD, but not quite perfect, 2019 Dutton/Penguin hardcover (blue/yellow boards) & dust jacket, first edition, first printing. B&W era photo section. CONTENT: Dr. Seuss is a classic American icon. Whimsical and wonderful, his work has defined our childhoods and the childhoods of our own children. The silly, simple rhymes are a bottomless well of magic, his illustrations timeless favorites because, quite simply, he makes us laugh. The Grinch, the Cat in the Hat, Horton, and so many more, are his troupe of beloved, and uniquely Seussian, creations. Theodor Geisel, however, had a second, more radical side. It is there that the allure and fascination of his Dr. Seuss alter ego begins. He had a successful career as an advertising man and then as a political cartoonist, his personal convictions appearing, not always subtly, throughout his books-remember the environmentalist of The Lorax? Geisel was a complicated man on an important mission. He introduced generations to the wonders of reading while teaching young people about empathy and how to treat others well. Agonizing over word choices and rhymes, touching up drawings sometimes for years, he upheld a rigorous standard of perfection for his work. Geisel took his responsibility as a writer for children seriously, talking down to no reader, no matter how small. And with classics like Green Eggs and Ham, Geisel delighted them while they learned. Suddenly, reading became fun. "Readers of Becoming Dr. Seuss may be astonished to learn in this rollicking ride of a biography that Theodor Seuss Geisel-progenitor of the most anarchic animals of all time-was himself a radically bizarre creation, every bit as strange and emotionally uncoordinated as a Snoo or a Sneetch. Childless, chain-smoking, and cocktail-swilling, bawdy and argumentative, Geisel got his unlikely start promoting Standard Oil's fly-killing insecticide (his ad campaign featured the immortal tag line "Quick, Henry! The Flit!"); drawing coarse political cartoons (sometimes racist or misogynist); and serving as a World War II understudy to Frank Capra, making films teaching grunts to evade death and mosquitoes. His epic transformation into one of the most beloved and bestselling children's writers of all time, winner of Oscars and a Pulitzer, is a poignant, affecting tale of a man who mastered the art of concision through imagination and sheer toil yet could never bring such exactitude to his own life, callously replacing his wife and editor of forty years, a suicide, with her rival. In Jones's telling, the Seussian legacy emerges triumphant, elevating the power of children's literature. "I no longer write for children," Geisel said proudly, at the end of his life. "I write for people."