Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss! 10 Fun Facts about Dr. Seuss!

Happy Birthday to Dr. Seuss! There are SO many fun and fantastic books by this prolific children’s book author, you can pull your favorites out of your bookshelf and read them ALL week!

Dolly loves  “10 Apples Up on Top”, “Fox in Socks” and “Hop on Pop”!

Of course, I love the classics “Horton Hears a Who”, “Green Eggs and Ham” and everyone’s favorite Christmas story “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”!

Below are some fun and maybe unknown facts about everybody’s favorite author!…

10 Fun Facts about Dr. Seuss !

1. “Dr. Seuss” was just a pen name. His real name was Theodor Seuss Geisel.

2. When he first used the name “Seuss: Geisel had  told tales that while studying at Dartmouth, he was caught drinking with friends which got him suspended from all extracurricular activities, including the college humor magazine. To continue to work on the cartoons without the college’s knowledge, Geisel began signing his work with the pen name “Seuss”.

3. Dr. Seuss hailed from Springfield, Massachusetts!

4. There are 46 books by Dr. Seuss!

5. He was a perfectionist in his work and would sometimes spend up to 1 year on a book. He would sometimes throw out 95% of his material until he was happy with it! Can you imagine the genius work that ended up in his trash can?!

6. The type of rhyming Dr. Seuss used in most books is called “anapestic meter”.

7. Perhaps surprising, Geisel was married with no children.

8. Geisel was more than just an author of children’s books. He worked on 11 television specials, four feature films, a Broadway musical and four television series. He worked as a political cartoonist for a NYC newspaper and in the US Army animation department during WWII where he wrote the film “Design for Death” that won an Academy Award for documentary in 1947! He also drew advertising for General Electric and NBC during the Depression.

9. His books are still insanely popular today! “The Cat in the Hat” was published in 1955. In 2009, The Cat in the Hatsold 452,258 copies – outselling the majority of newly published children’s books!

10. Dr. Seuss’s honors include two Academy awards, two Emmy awards, a Peabody award, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal and the Pulitzer Prize. Dr. Seuss has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame! Geisel’s birthday, March 2, has also been adopted as the annual date for “Read Across America” Day, a national day of reading!