Theodor Seuss Geisel was born 2 March 1904 in Springfield, MA. He graduated Dartmouth College in 1925, and proceeded on to Oxford University with the intent of acquiring a doctorate in literature. He returned from Europe in 1927, and began working for a magazine called Judge, the leading humor magazine in America at the time, submitting both cartoons and humorous articles for them. Additionally, he was submitting cartoons to Life, Vanity Fair and Liberty.

In 1936 on the way to a vacation in Europe, listening to the rhythm of the ship's engines, he came up with And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, which was rejected by the first 43 publishers he showed it to. Eventually in 1937 a friend published the book for him, and it went on to moderate success.

During WW II, Geisel joined the army and was sent to Hollywood. Captain Geisel would write for Frank Capra's Signal Corps Unit (for which he won the Legion of Merit) and do documentaries (he won Oscar's for Hitler Lives and Design for Death). He also created a cartoon called Gerald McBoing-Boing which also won him an Oscar.

In May of 1954, Life published a report concerning illiteracy among school children. The report said, among other things, that children were having trouble to read because their books were boring. This inspired Geisel's publisher. He sent Geisel a list of 400 basic words and asked him to cut the list to 250 words (as many as a first grader could absorb) and write a book. Nine months later, The Cat in the Hat was published, using only 220 of the words, and went on to instant success. In 1960 Geisel wrote an entire book using only fifty different words, Green Eggs and Ham.

Theodor Seuss Geisel died 24 September 1991.

(www.seuss.org)

The Cat in the Hat

The sun did not shine.
It was too wet to play.
So we sat in the house
All that cold, cold, wet day.

I sat there with Sally.
We sat there, we two.
And I said, "How I wish
We had something to do!"

Too wet to go out
And too cold to play ball.
So we sat in the house.
We did nothing at all.

So all we could do was to
Sit!
 Sit!
  Sit!
   Sit!
And we did not like it.
Not one little bit.

BUMP!
And then
Something went BUMP!
How that bump made us jump!

We looked!
Then we saw him step in on the mat!
We looked!
And we saw him!
The Cat in the Hat!

[...]

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