{"id":12797,"date":"2019-07-21T18:39:54","date_gmt":"2019-07-21T22:39:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=12797"},"modified":"2019-07-21T22:41:10","modified_gmt":"2019-07-22T02:41:10","slug":"becoming-dr-seuss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2019\/07\/21\/becoming-dr-seuss\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Becoming Dr. Seuss\u2019 Is A Drafting-Table-Side-Seat At The Creation Of Children\u2019s Classics"},"content":{"rendered":"

I binge read Brian Jay Jones’s biography \u201cBecoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisel and the Making of an American Imagination\u201d<\/a> (Dutton). I couldn’t put it down. Jones tells Geisel’s bumpy journey of a gifted creative stumbling to find his sea legs in the early 20th century economy, and moves on to give a drafting-table-side-seat to witness the birth of each early reader that ignited my own childhood imagination.<\/p>\n

Dr. Seuss was born Theodore Geisel in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1904. His German immigrant grandpa was the founder of a brewing company, and his grandpa\u2019s favorite hobby was driving his giant, beautiful draft horses that pulled his beer wagon. This was an inspiration for Seuss\u2019s first kids book, \u201cAnd to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street,\u201d published in 1937.<\/p>\n

\"\u201cBecoming<\/a>
\u201cBecoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisel and the Making of an American Imagination\u201d by Brian Jay Jones. (Dutton)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Seuss was a C student at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. He was one of those people who drew comics for the school humor magazine\u2014adopting the pen name, Dr. Seuss, his mother\u2019s family name, so he could continue publishing cartoons after being banned from the publication by school authorities for getting caught drinking illegal gin in his room. As a young American at Oxford, struggling with boredom at J.R.R. Tolkein’s lectures, he doodled his weird animals in the margins of his lecture notes. A classmate, Helen Palmer, viewing his doodles over his shoulder and noting his incompatibility with the career path of English professor, advised him to try to find a way to make money with those weird creatures. She married this creative diamond in the rough, and completely devoted herself to his career. She helped with the writing, accounting and administration.<\/p>\n

In New York, Seuss drew cartoons and illustrations for magazines and advertising\u2014including, \u201cQuick, Henry, the Flit!\u201d for a bug spray manufactured by Standard Oil. As World War II broke out, he drew pro-Roosevelt, anti-Hitler, anti-Japanese newspaper political cartoons. Growing up during World War I, Seuss kids hucked coal at him out of anti-German-American bigotry. But during World War II, Seuss supported imprisoning Japanese-Americans. Jones makes a good point: Seuss should have known better.<\/p>\n

In 1943, Seuss joined an Army motion picture unit. I was so jealous to learn how for his military duty in WWII, he got to have an apprenticeship learning storyboarding and filmmaking with Frank Capra, best known for directing the 1946 film \u201cIt\u2019s a Wonderful Life.\u201d Capra taught him how to hone his storyboarding skills, especially how to strike any words or images that failed to move the story forward.<\/p>\n

Seuss made an Army film about how to kindly, forgivingly relate to Germans after victory. He worried about German children raised on Hitler\u2019s propaganda, brainwashed by it. He thought they deserved better. He wondered how are we going to help young children develop their minds? Then in preparation for the defeat of the Japanese, Seuss made a documentary film \u201cOur Job in Japan,\u201d about how to sympathetically relate to the Japanese as well. But the government didn\u2019t release it. It got reworked for commercial release as 1947\u2019s \u201cDesign for Death,\u201d and won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. Seuss would dedicate his 1954 book \u201cHorton Hears a Who\u201d to the Japanese. He acknowledged their humanity and regretted that his war propaganda had helped dehumanize them.<\/p>\n

I so appreciate all the detailed insights into how the artist gained skills, strategies and vision, made mistakes, tried new things, failed sometimes, reframed difficulties with humor and absurdity. It took years for his children\u2019s books to become successes. He finally broke through with books like \u201cThe Cat In The Hat\u201d (1957) and \u201cHow the Grinch Stole Christmas!\u201d (1957).<\/p>\n

\"Dr.<\/a>
Dr. Seuss National Memorial Sculpture Garden at the Springfield Museums, Springfield, Massachusetts, May 6, 2019. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

With his success, his publisher, Random House, gave him his own Beginning Reader imprint to oversee. He picked the Berenstains, but insisted on a name change: No, you\u2019re Stan and Jan; nobody wants to say Stanley and Janice.<\/p>\n

In 1948, Geisel and Helen moved to La Jolla, California, and built a fantasy home and studio overlooking the Pacific. Their neighbors included a doctor and his nurse wife by the name of Audrey, with whom Seuss had a love affair. When Helen found out, she killed herself in 1967. Seuss promptly married Audrey. I was really creeped out by this turn with his relationships. It really challenges your fandom to read such creepy stuff about creatives whose work you admire.<\/p>\n

Then I would have these moments where, oh my gosh, they\u2019re going to talk about THIS book! And I would be instantly transported to my childhood, reliving my bottomless delight for each of his books as a beginning reader and simultaneously taking notes an adult who aspires to the craft. I couldn\u2019t put the book down. “Becoming Dr. Seuss” is a must-read for any writer, illustrator or educator of young children. The only things I found missing were photo illustrations of Dr. Seuss’s early years and work, and I’m left wanting to know more about Helen, who wrote several children’s books herself, but whose identity was consumed as his helper to a tragic end.<\/p>\n

I love how Jones wove details about formative moments of Seuss\u2019s skill building and his creative process in with stories of the events of his life. A lot of times, writers skimp on this in biographies, but Jones really shares a lot of insight on Seuss\u2019s thought processes and problem solving progressions. Truly magic.<\/p>\n

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If this is the kind of coverage of arts, cultures and activisms you appreciate, please support Wonderland by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n

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I binge read Brian Jay Jones’s biography \u201cBecoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisel and the Making of an American Imagination\u201d (Dutton). I couldn’t put it down. Jones tells Geisel’s bumpy journey of a gifted creative stumbling to find his sea legs in the early 20th century economy, and moves on to give a drafting-table-side-seat to witness […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12803,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[211,583],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12797"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12797"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12797\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12802,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12797\/revisions\/12802"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}