⭐ Feature: The Story of Dr. Seuss ("The Father of Children's Literature")
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On March 2nd is Read Across America Day. It's a day when schools across the United States inspire young children to read. Today, we're going to talk about reading and specifically about Dr. Seuss, who's known here as the father of children's literature. I hope you enjoy this feature episode.

When I was in elementary school, my best friend's name was Annie. Annie came from a Mormon family. Her dad was the president of the Mormon church. And Annie and I were a lot alike. Now, despite having very similar personalities and similar activities, we both played flute in the school band and sang in the choir.

Her family and home life was very different from mine. Annie was one of six kids, and her family was much more musical, and they consumed way more vegetables, than anyone I'd ever met. Her family also didn't have a TV. At nighttime, Annie and her brothers and sisters would sit down and read.

In fact, I remember having to fill out reading logs for school, and those were sort of documents where we had to track how much we read per week. And her mom always signed off on Annie having read four to five hours a week. She signed off on it. In other words, she confirmed that Annie had read four to five hours.

I used to compare her reading log to my own. I'd only read about one and a half to two hours in a week.

We were about 10 years old at the time, and I can't remember whether I was jealous of her accomplished reading log or just impressed by it. Maybe a little of both. The point is, I'll never forget how fast she finished long chapter books. She'd store the majority of them on her bookshelves, and bookshelves were everywhere. They were in her living room, the

The entryway, the hallway. The first time I went in her house, I remember thinking, this looks like that scene from Beauty and the Beast, where Beauty discovers the castle library. Anyway, if you're listening to this podcast, you're a learner. Perhaps you're an avid reader like Annie. Hats off to you if you are.

Reading is such a healthy skill to be able to pause the real world and immerse oneself into the magic of a story. And it also gets the imagination working. For a kid to experience that from a young age, well, that's an incredible gift. As an adult,

or as someone who can read, it's sort of a gift we can give to someone. We can inspire others to read. We can share the skill of reading as well. So how can we make kids fall in love with reading? Well, Annie might say, first of all, get rid of your TV, which is unrealistic for a lot of us.

I'd say a good start is introduce kids to good books. And what better author to introduce than Theodore Geisel? Theodore Geisel was an American author more commonly known as Dr. Seuss, and his classic rhyming children's books fill the bookshelves of many family homes across the U.S.,

You may know him already. He's responsible for How the Grinch Stole Christmas, The Cat in the Hat, One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, and even Green Eggs and Ham.

I do not like green eggs and ham. I do not like them, Sam-I-Am. Today, you'll hear all about Dr. Seuss, and if I'm honest, I'm a little bit disappointed in myself that it took 140 episodes to share his story.

Better late than never, though. Let's do this. Hi, everybody. My name is Shawna, and this is the American English Podcast. My goal here is to teach you the English spoken in the United States. Through common expressions, pronunciation tips, and interesting cultural snippets or stories, I hope to keep this fun, useful, and interesting. Let's do it. Once upon a time, there was a cold-hearted man...

who lived in a cave on the highest mountain near Whoville. He was so cruel. He tried to steal Christmas away from the Whos, who lived in the village down below. He stole their wreaths and their trees, the stockings that hung by their fireplaces. He even stole their Christmas feast.

That man's name was the Grinch, and he was famously described as having a heart two sizes too small. Many American families enjoy watching the original animated How the Grinch Stole Christmas when December rolls around each year.

The songs, the characters, and the storyline are so clever, funny, and well done, it's hard to imagine that the story was written in 1957 and that the short film came out in 1966. So who was the animator and author behind The Grinch?

Let's flash back to Springfield, Massachusetts on March 2nd, 1904. That day, a baby boy was born, and his name was Theodore Soice Geisel. His parents and friends called him Teddy, or Ted for short. As a child, little Ted was greatly influenced by his family.

His mother was a hefty woman, 6'2 and 200 pounds, who was the daughter of a local German baker. She grew up with a love of sweets and words. While making dessert at home, she'd sing the ingredients in her recipes. She always played with words until they rhymed. She even sang them to her kids before they went to sleep.

As a kid, Ted took it all in. And when he got older, he could still sing that list of pie names just as she did. Apple, Mince, Lemon, Peach, Apricot, Pineapple, Blueberry, Coconut, Custard, and Squash. Ted later attributed his admiration of words to his mother.

Henrietta was her name, Nettie for short. Nettie would read to him in German and in English every night before bed, usually telling stories that playfully taught values and morals, such as how to be a proper guest, how to be obedient, or how to have proper etiquette.

Etiquette means expected behavior and good manners. While his mother was warm and playful, his father was quiet and hardworking. He was in charge of the family brewery called Kalmbach & Geisel. Although Springfield, Massachusetts had many German immigrants at the time, Americans had a hard time pronouncing that name, so they called the brewery Comeback & Guzzle.

Tegusl means to drink quickly. The brewery was very successful. That is, up until World War I. Ted was almost 13 years old when the war broke out. And overnight, a strong anti-German sentiment was growing across the U.S. He felt it in his small town.

All of Ted's classmates knew of his German heritage. And of course, the brewery and bakery were local staples. So he'd get picked on, just like other German-American children at school. To pick on means to harass verbally. They picked on Ted because he had German relatives. They called him names, like Drunken Hans.

According to the documentary Rhymes and Reasons on the Theodore Seuss Geisel YouTube channel, Dr. Seuss was a bit of a loner. Or perhaps you could call him a curious independent. The point is he didn't enjoy spending time in groups. He spent much of his childhood with his sister Marnie, who was two years older than him.

They'd play in the open fields near home, and they'd spend ample time at the nearby Forest Park Zoo, which they loved. Ted examined the animals. At times, he'd even sketch them in his little notebook. He even drew a mural on Marnie's wall of the animals he saw. His parents encouraged him to draw.

At first, he tried to make animals realistic. But over time, he preferred cartoon-like animals. If he drew a cow, it'd have wings. If there was a camel, he might have ten humps on its back.

At school, English was his favorite subject. When it was time to apply for college, he followed in the footsteps of his English teacher, who went to Dartmouth. Dartmouth is an Ivy League school in New Hampshire. It was pretty rural, the architecture was beautiful, and he got involved in the school publication called Jack-O-Lantern, or Jack-O for short.

It was there that he found like-minded people, and his stories and drawings were not only appreciated, but they were so loved he became editor-in-chief. What's funny is that Ted was a jokester. He never took life seriously. He was once caught putting fake pearls and oysters at a house party.

Once, he attended a charity event at a La Jolla department store and disappeared. Where did Ted go? They found him upstairs with a marker in his hand, changing the prices on all of the shoes because he thought they were too expensive. In college, he once got in trouble for drinking gin during Prohibition.

Prohibition lasted from 1920 to 1933 in the U.S., and it was a time when the sale of alcohol was strictly prohibited. It wasn't allowed. His dad's brewery got shut down because of it. One night, Ted was caught drinking gin with some friends and was banned from his position as editor-in-chief.

but Ted found a way around it. He just kept writing with different names. Sometimes he'd just sign his work as Le Cig, which was Geisel backwards. Sometimes he'd use Soys. Soys was his middle name. When Ted wasn't escaping in his art and his writing, he was dreaming of life and adventure overseas.

At 21, on the day of graduation, he went to England for the first time in hopes of becoming a professor of English literature at Oxford University. While in class, though, when the teacher was speaking, he would doodle. To doodle means to draw playfully, without much thought. Think back to your school days. Did you doodle in the margins of your paper?

So in the area where you weren't writing your class notes, Ted did. He drew cute little characters and goofy animals that caught the attention of a woman sitting behind him, Helen Marin Palmer. When they got to talking, he told her he dreamed of becoming a professor, and she told him he was crazy. In her eyes, Ted was an artist.

The two of them hit it off, and eventually, he started to take her seriously. Imagine what's possible when learning doesn't get in the way of life. At Capella University, our game-changing FlexPath learning format lets you set your own deadlines so you can learn at a time and pace that works for you.

It's an education you can tailor to your schedule. That means you don't have to put your life on hold to pursue your professional goals. Instead, enjoy learning your way and earning a degree without missing a beat. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at capella.edu. After his first year at Oxford, he dropped out to pursue a career in drawing.

But he liked Helen. He wanted to keep her around. The problem was he was broke. First things first, he had to make money as an artist. But how? The answer was pretty simple. Advertising. On July 16, 1927, after many attempts trying to get his artwork published, the Saturday Evening Post paid him $25 for a cartoon.

It was his first real money with art, and with it, he moved to New York City. New York City at the time was home to the advertising industry. If he wanted to make it big, that's where he had to be. Times Square, billboards, Broadway. But with a mere $25 in his pocket, he got a reality check. All he could afford was to move into a small,

dingy, rat-infested apartment with a buddy from Dartmouth. He once told friends that they'd spend the evenings whacking rats with long canes. Is that true or was he exaggerating? It's hard to say. Ted loved stretching the truth no matter what story he told. Fortunately, he wasn't whacking rats for long. New York is where his career took off.

To take off is a phrasal verb that means to succeed. New York is where his career took off. His roomie helped him get a job at Judge, a satirical magazine that offered him a steady salary of $75 a week. He was making bank, and it was enough money to marry Helen. ♪

Helen was great for Ted. She was smart and sophisticated, and he trusted her opinion. They worked great as a team. And with her in the picture, he started to make a name for himself. Literally, he made himself what we call a pen name. In English, a pen name is a fake pen.

or alternative name that an author goes by. It's also known as a pseudonym, with a silent P in the beginning. Pseudonym. Theodor Geisel's pen name was Dr. Seuss. Seuss was both his middle name and his mother's maiden name. She pronounced it Seuss. She was German, after all. But Seuss was the pronunciation that stuck.

As for the doctor in the beginning, well, we know Ted wanted to get his doctorate from Oxford. Remember? He dropped out. Although he didn't become a real doctor, he could make it part of his pen name. Why not? Dr. Seuss it was. Life in advertising went well for Dr. Seuss. And it's really thanks to Flit, a bug spray brand.

Before it was common to have air conditioners at home, people opened their windows at night to cool their houses down. With the cool air came bugs, such as flies and mosquitoes. Ted was creative. He drew a knight in shining armor in a room with a dragon who was frustrated because he couldn't sleep.

The caption read, darn it all, another dragon, and just after I'd sprayed the whole house with flit. He even thought of a tagline for them. A tagline is also known as a catchphrase or a slogan. For example, McDonald's is I'm loving it. Apple, think different. L'Oreal, because you're worth it. Nike, just do it.

You get the point. So he created a tagline or a catchphrase for Flit, which was, quick, Henry, the Flit. Whenever there were bugs, people would quote Seuss's tagline. It was wildly popular. Quick, Henry, the Flit. Sales were so great, he was hired on projects for Standard Oil and other companies. And in general, he just did well.

If you think back to U.S. history, you probably remember that the Great Depression hit on October 24th, 1929. Times were rough for many Americans, but not for Ted. Flit hired him for $12,000 a year, which was a lot of money at the time. When he started making that good money, he could live out some of the fantasies he had.

He and Helen started traveling extensively, and together they hit over 30 different countries. Each time they returned from a trip, his characters would be more imaginative, his stories more clever. It was around then that he considered selling his own work. But there was a hiccup along the way.

In 1931, just after he'd started to see some success, his mother passed away. It really shook him up. She brought him the joy of words, remember? She would never see the success of his books that were about to be made. While aboard a ship on his way home from an adventure, Ted got a bad case of seasickness.

While sitting with his notebook in hand, he wrote some rhymes about Mulberry Street, the main street in the town he'd grown up in. One line he kept reciting to the same roar of the ship's engine. And that is the story that no one can beat and to think that I saw it on Mulberry Street.

A story formed around that rhyme. There was a boy walking home from school, and as he walked, the world around him transformed. A magician appeared, and so did a man with a long beard. There were musicians and animals galore. The boy's same old walk home from school, with just a splash of imagination, could turn into a traveling circus.

As Beatrice Potter later described, it was about, quote, truthful simplicity of the untruthfulness. Once the book was complete, it was rejected by 27 publishers, perhaps because it was unlike any other book published before. Popular books at that time had morals at the ends. The kids behaved. They did what they were supposed to do. They were vanilla.

Yes, vanilla. That's a very slang way to say boring or unimaginative. The stories were vanilla. Ted was frustrated and wanted to burn the book, which was titled And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street.

But then a magnificent coincidence happened. He ran into an old friend who had just become the book editor of Vanguard Press. Vanguard liked publishing unique books, and he agreed to publish. As a thank you, Dr. Seuss named the boy of the book Marco. Marco after his friend's son. WORLD WAR II

Ted was 38 when World War II broke out. He enlisted, but he was too old to be sent to the forefront and too young to not be involved. So he was sent to Hollywood, where Warner Brothers was converted into a military training center. The famous Frank Capra wanted him to create videos that would both entertain and motivate young soldiers.

Ted was ready for the job. Beside him was the creator of Bugs Bunny. You heard me. Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. The man's name was Chuck Jones. Together, they knocked the project out of the park.

In other words, they did phenomenally well. It was a huge success. They knocked the project out of the park. The goal was to motivate and entertain young soldiers.

Instead of teaching how to be the best soldier ever, they made a character who was the worst soldier ever. And he kept screwing up, left and right. His name was Snafu. It stood for Situation Normal All Fouled Up. The film taught trainees how to act through entertaining mistakes.

As a last project at Warner, he worked on a film that showed what would happen after a war victory. The film ended up getting two Oscars. By the end of the war, Ted had decided that he liked California.

For a moment, he considered becoming a screenwriter, but fortunately, he stuck to writing books. Helen and Ted moved to La Jolla, which is a beautiful beach town near San Diego. They built a home atop of a hill, and that's where he'd write his most famous books.

Dr. Seuss's working style was unique. He'd chain smoke while drinking vodka on the rocks, staying awake long past midnight, fantasizing a world of his imagination. If you flip through his books, you'll run into some of these wild characters. Names and places even come from his childhood neighbors, Terwilliger, Bickelbaum, and McGilligate.

Others he invented, like Willy Waterloo and Yertle the Turtle, who was an unpleasant character he created with Adolf Hitler in mind.

While finished Dr. Seuss books seem simplistic in nature, Ted once claimed that to write a 60-page book, he'd need to write 1,000 pages. He'd write and then rewrite so much that the finished product would look nothing like it did at the get-go. At the get-go means at the beginning.

When he was done, he was usually convinced that whatever it was he'd made was made for the garbage. Helen would convince him otherwise. Sometimes, she'd even help him cure his writer's block. Like,

creating the ending to the famous book Horton Hatches an Egg. For a limited time, you can get KFC chicken with the sweet heat of hot honey. And after one bite, you'll wonder, how do bees make hot honey so hot? Are they special bees? Does KFC have dragon bees? Fire-breathing dragon bees that create spicy honey? No, silly. There's no such thing.

After World War II, literacy rates dropped in the U.S. When you are literate, it means you can read.

When you are illiterate, it means you can't read. The literacy rate, the rate at which people were learning to read in the U.S., was decreasing. Why? Television. According to an article posted by NYU, quote, the number of television sets in use rose from 6,000 in 1946 to some 12 million by 1951.

No new invention entered American homes faster than black and white television sets. By 1955, half of all U.S. homes had one, unquote. Instead of picking up books, many Americans were sitting down to watch TV. In that same time frame, as television spread across the U.S., more babies were born than ever before.

We called it the baby boom, and even today, people born from 1946 to 1964 are called baby boomers. The baby boomers grew up with television, and as a result of it, literacy rates dropped.

There was an effort in the U.S. to improve literacy. Knowing that repetition was good for learning and simple books were needed to get kids hooked on them, Time magazine challenged authors to write books using simple words. They even had a list of 225.

For almost a year, Ted revisited that list of words, trying to figure out how he could manipulate them into a story that was unique and interesting. But it was too hard. Eventually, he chose the first two words that rhymed from that list, cat and hat. He wrote a book and called it The Cat in the Hat. It was a massive success.

Seuss had created an engaging story about a crazy cat who came to play with two children on a rainy day. It was written in verse, so it rhymed. It was also playful and fun and repeated in a way that facilitated learning.

Phyllis, the wife of Bert, who was in charge of Random House Publishing at the time, thought the result was phenomenal and decided to collaborate with Ted and his wife Helen to make the beginner book series, I Can Read by Myself. It was tricky to get a book in the series. The word count was limited. The story had to be great. The pictures had to go along with the words.

so it would be extra easy for a beginner reader. Roald Dahl tried to get one in, Truman Capote also, but eventually they gave up. P.D. Eastman, an old friend of Ted's, wrote and illustrated Are You My Mother? and Go Dog Go, two children's books in the beginner book series that are still very popular today.

Dr. Seuss liked being challenged. One day, the head of Random House bet him $50 that he couldn't make a great illustrated book with only 50 words. That's when Green Eggs and Ham was born, a story about a man named Sam-I-Am who really likes Green Eggs and Ham and tries to get another to like it too.

The story presented is ridiculous and hilarious, and it teaches an important lesson. You have to try something to know if you like it. Green Eggs and Ham is one of the top best-selling children's books of all time. And can you believe it all started with a bet?

Seuss strongly believed that kids could be presented with any topic, even hard, controversial ones, as long as the ideas were presented playfully and they didn't preach. For example, the Lorax was about protecting the environment. The Butter Battle was about the arms race with Soviet Russia.

He didn't take sides. He just sort of presented the situation in a playful way to get a discussion started.

One of the most surprising things people learn about Seuss is that he was a bit afraid of kids. He hadn't spent much time around them, other than with his niece Peggy. She once mentioned that he might have wanted a kid if it hadn't been for his wife's condition. Helen was infertile. She couldn't have kids. When he met children, he was a bit awkward. Unlike his perfect prose and verse, he wasn't a good talker.

So he tried to stay out of the public eye. He avoided interviews. Perhaps he felt by speaking, he ruined the magic. He once said he liked kids thinking that Dr. Seuss was the crazy cat in the hat, or even Santa Claus. Do you remember Chuck Jones, the creator of Bugs Bunny, who worked with Dr. Seuss during World War II?

By the 1960s, he came around again. By then, he'd created Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote. Beep, beep. They decided to collaborate again. Together, they made one of the era's most expensive 30 minutes of TV, the incredible animated short film How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

From the outside, Dr. Seuss's life looked perfect. He liked sitting at the top of his tower on the hill. He'd imagine the lives of rich women of La Jolla. He called them the bird ladies of La Jolla. And at times, he drew parallels between his life and that of the Grinch. He even drove around with a license plate that read Grinch.

In his free time, he and his wife, Helen, hosted extravagant parties, and they responded to fan mail as a team. They wrote what were called cat notes, little rhymes on pieces of paper to fans around the U.S. But behind the scenes, something was beginning to crumble. Their marriage.

Helen had enabled his life and facilitated his career. She read all of his books, gave her input, and he respected her feedback. She was integral in all of his stories and daily life for years. And then a shockwave hit.

In her late 60s, her health was weakening. She was losing her eyesight, and on October 3rd, 1967, at the age of 69, she was found dead in her bedroom from a drug overdose. Beside her was a suicide note talking about failure. Now, eight months later, Dr. Seuss married Audrey Stone Diamond, a family friend.

Everyone in the town of La Jolla talked about an affair. They knew the famed author on the hilltop, and the rumors spread. People blamed Ted and Audrey for disrupting Ted's marriage and causing the suicide of Helen. Was he having an affair? No one can say for sure. Everyone agrees the situation was tragic.

Audrey brought a different energy to the last 25 years of Ted's life. She was energetic, and he loved that. People saw that he started caring more about his appearance. His secretary claimed that he was so proud to be around Audrey because she could carry herself in any conversation, and everyone was impressed by her dancing skills.

She took care of him until the end of his life. On September 24, 1991, at 87 years old, Theodor Seuss-Geisel passed away from cancer. His legacy lives on. It's Audrey we can thank for the release of toys, animated shows, and movies.

that have come out using Dr. Seuss characters and books. She permitted the creation of those. He was afraid that movies would ruin his characters. What do you guys think? Have they?

Dr. Seuss started in advertising, eventually becoming a political cartoonist, and then wrote and illustrated books that made reading fun for kids. In his lifetime, he wrote more than 60 books, published around 44, and he sold over 650 million copies in over 20 languages. It probably would be more if it wasn't for all of the tricky rhymes.

He's won two honorary Academy Awards, two Emmys, a Peabody Award, the Laurel Ingalls Wilder Medal, the Inkpot Award, and a Pulitzer Prize in 1984.

Today, there's also a Theodore Seuss Geisel Award given to new books that inspire children to read. You might even want to check out the Dr. Seuss Museum and Sculpture Garden in Springfield, Massachusetts, to stand next to life-size versions of characters from his books. Perhaps you might just want to get a book. They're great. ♪

When I was in high school, my friend Stacey and I put on red onesies and blue wigs. On the front of my costume, it said Thing 1. And on the front of hers, it said Thing 2. We were dressed as the two famous twins from Dr. Seuss's book, The Cat in the Hat. And we were on a mission to get kids excited about reading.

The occasion was Read Across America Day, which is an annual celebration of books and reading that takes place every year on March 2nd. You might recognize the date. March 2nd was Dr. Seuss's birthday. Stacey and I and about 10 of our friends spent the day in elementary school classrooms reading to kids, and I remember just how excited those kids were to see us.

Now that I'm a parent, I often think about how to instill the love of reading in my kids. Choosing the right books is a big part of this task. I highly recommend checking out Dr. Seuss books, especially those from the Beginner Books series. I can read by myself.

If you would like to see the full list of my book recommendations, be sure to check out the episode notes for that link. I hope you enjoyed that episode. See you next time. Bye. Thank you for listening to this episode of the American English Podcast. Remember, it's my goal here to not only help you improve your listening comprehension, but to show you how to speak like someone from the States.

If you want to receive the full transcript for this episode, or you just want to support this podcast, make sure to sign up to premium content on AmericanEnglishPodcast.com. Thanks and hope to see you soon.

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Angel Reese and McDonald's have the key to a post-game meal of champions. A QPC with barbecue and bacon, chips and a soda. The pros call it the Angel Reese Special. Get the Angel Reese Special only at McDonald's. At McDonald's participants for a limited time.