Dr. Seuss was the pen name of Theodor Seuss Geisel, born in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1904. He died in La Jolla, California, in 1991. The "Dr." was never earned. He took a bachelor's degree at Dartmouth in 1925, studied literature at Oxford and the Sorbonne, and then worked as a magazine humorist and advertising illustrator. In the early 1940s he drew editorial cartoons for the New York paper PM. Britannica notes that some of those cartoons contain racist depictions of Asians, Arabs and Africans, and that is part of his record too.
His first children's book, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, came out in 1937 from Vanguard Press, after many publishers had turned it down. The style he built from there is easy to spot: galloping rhyme, made-up words, odd animals, and drawings that look as if they are about to wobble off the page. In 1957 he published The Cat in the Hat and How the Grinch Stole Christmas! A year later he founded Beginner Books, which became a division of Random House in 1960. It produced early-reader titles such as Green Eggs and Ham, Hop on Pop and Fox in Socks.
In 1984 he received a special Pulitzer Prize citation for his contribution to the education and enjoyment of America's children and their parents. He also won two Primetime Emmys for animated television specials.
The Lorax (1971) is one of his plainest cautionary tales. The Once-ler chops down Truffula trees to knit Thneeds, and the Lorax, who speaks for the trees, objects. It was adapted as a 1972 television special and as a 2012 animated film.
If The Lorax brought you here, try Horton Hears a Who! next for another story with a moral at its centre. Then read The Cat in the Hat to see how fast and funny his rhyme can get.
