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MileChai All Hebrew Dr Seuss' Books and
Now in
Yiddish
Dr. Seuss was born Theodor Geisel in
Springfield, Massachusetts on March 2, 1904.
After attending Dartmouth College and Oxford
University, he began a career in advertising.
His advertising cartoons, featuring Quick,
Henry, the Flit!, appeared in several leading
American magazines. Dr. Seuss's first
children's book, And To Think That I Saw It On
Mulberry Street, hit the market in 1937, and
the world of children's literature was changed
forever! In 1957, Seuss's The Cat in the Hat
became the prototype for one of Random House's
best- selling series, Beginner Books. This
popular series combined engaging stories with
outrageous illustrations and playful sounds to
teach basic reading skills. Brilliant,
playful, and always respectful of children,
Dr. Seuss charmed his way into the
consciousness of four generations of
youngsters and parents. In the process, he
helped kids learn to read.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1984 and three
Academy Awards, Seuss was the author and
illustrator of 44 children's books, some of
which have been made into audiocassettes,
animated television specials, and videos for
children of all ages. Even after his death in
1991, Dr. Seuss continues to be the
best-selling author of children's books in the
world.
Read more
Dr. Seuss's art
Seuss's earlier artwork often employed the
shaded texture of pencil drawings or watercolors, but in children's books of
the postwar period he generally employed the starker medium of pen and ink,
normally using just black, white, and one or two colors. Later books such as
The Lorax used more colors, not necessarily to better effect.
Seuss's figures are often somewhat rounded and droopy. This is true, for
instance, of the faces of the Grinch and of the Cat in the Hat. It is also
true of virtually all buildings and machinery that Seuss drew: although
these objects abound in straight lines in real life, Seuss carefully avoided
straight lines in drawing them. For buildings, this could be accomplished in
part through choice of architecture. For machines, Seuss simply distorted
reality; for example, If I Ran the Circus includes a droopy hoisting crane
and a droopy steam calliope.
Seuss evidently enjoyed drawing architecturally elaborate objects. His
endlessly varied (but never rectilinear) palaces, ramps, platforms, and
free-standing stairways are among his most evocative creations. Seuss also
drew elaborate imaginary machines, of which the Audio-Telly-O-Tally-O-Count,
from Dr. Seuss's Sleep Book, is one example. Seuss also liked drawing
outlandish arrangements of feathers or fur, for example, the 500th hat of
Bartholemew Cubbins, the tail of Gertrude McFuzz, and the pet for girls who
like to brush and comb, in One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.
Seuss's images often convey motion vividly. He was fond of a sort of "voilà"
gesture, in which the hand flips outward, spreading the fingers slightly
backward with the thumb up; this is done by Ish, for instance, in One Fish,
Two Fish when he creates fish (who perform the gesture themselves with their
fins), in the introduction of the various acts of If I Ran the Circus, and
in the introduction of the Little Cats in The Cat in the Hat Comes Back.
Seuss also follows the cartoon tradition of showing motion with lines, for
instance in the sweeping lines that accompany Sneelock's final dive in If I
Ran the Circus. Cartoonist's lines are also used to illustrate the action of
the senses (sight, smell, and hearing) in The Big Brag and even of thought,
as in the moment when the Grinch conceives his awful idea. |
