Scatter Brained

C H A P T E R   2

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48
S C A T T E R B R A I N E D
08
  One Fish, Two Fish:
Th
  e Life and Times of Dr. Seuss
In 1960, publisher Bennett Cerf bet Dr. Seuss $50 that Seuss 
couldn’t write a book using only 50 diff erent words. So Seuss 
wrote 
Green Eggs and Ham,
 
which became an instant 
 picture book classic. Cerf ap-
parently never paid up, inci-
dentally. 
Green Eggs and Ham
 
marked  the  apex  of  Seuss’s 
minimalist-vocabulary pe-
riod, and it was an awfully 
impressive  feat  (we  used  50 
diff erent words just to tell 
you about it).
✖  ✖  ✖
When 
Dr. Seuss Goes to War,
 a 
collection  of  Geisel’s  World 
War II–era cartoons created 
for 
PM 
magazine, was pub-
lished in 1999, the American 
public was stunned. How could 
the author of peace-loving, 
Truff ula Tree–hugging chil-
dren’s books have penned 
 
wartime cartoons that at-
tacked Japanese Americans 
and  depicted the Japanese as 
bucktoothed buff oons? Some 
argued that Seuss was only 
Seuss: The Basics
Theodor Seuss Geisel wasn’t ac-
tually a doctor (at least not until 
his alma mater, Dartmouth, 
gave him an honorary PhD), but 
his unique poetic meter and kid-
friendly, leap-off-the-page illus-
trations made him one of the 
most successful children’s writers 
in history (220 million books 
sold). From books intended to 
teach vocabulary and reading 
skills (like 
The Cat in the Hat
) to 
allegorical tales of power-
 hungry turtles and environmen-
tal destruction (
Yertle the Turtle
 
and 
The Lorax,
 respectively), Dr. 
Seuss was a vital innovator in 
the world of children’s books for 
more than fi fty years. When he 
arrived on the kid-lit scene, chil-
dren’s books were boring, life-
less tomes (once you’ve seen 
Spot run a couple times, you’re 
ready to give up reading for 
good). Dr. Seuss created picture 
books that we 
wanted
 to read.

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49
refl ecting his times; others 
argued  that   racism  is  racism 
(regardless of whether it’s in a 
box or with a fox).
✖  ✖  ✖
Before he started speaking for 
the trees, Dr. Seuss was, well, 
a sellout. For fi fteen years he 
wrote and designed ads for 
the corporate monolith Stan-
dard  Oil.  In  a  series  of  ads 
hawking Standard’s pesticide 
Flit, Geisel coined the popular 
catchphrase, “Quick, Henry, 
the Flit!” which was sort of 
the “Mikey likes it!” of its 
time.
✖  ✖  ✖
While it would probably be a 
slight  exaggeration  to  say 
that Dr. Seuss singlehand-
edly ended the Cold War, 
Th e 
Butter Battle Book
 was one of 
the most infl uential anti-arms-race books of the ’80s. Tell-
ing the story of the absurd war between the Yooks and the 
Zooks (whose sole disagreement is whether one ought to 
eat bread butter side up or butter side down), Seuss subtly 
challenged the Reagan administration’s emphasis on de-
fense over social welfare programs. For six months, the 
book was on the 
New York Times
 Best Sellers list—for adults. 
Every single one of Seuss’s books sold well to kids, of 
course—not  that  these  kids  coming  up  next  would  ever 
deign to read him. . . .
Horton Spies 
a  Kegger
Dr. Seuss came from a long 
line of German brewmasters, 
which perhaps explains how 
he came to throw a drunken 
bash during his Dartmouth 
days. Due to school policy 
(and also federal law, since 
Prohibition forbade drinking 
in those days), Ted’s excellent 
venture got him fi red from his 
position at 
The Dartmouth 
Jack-O-Lantern, 
the college’s 
humor magazine
.
 But the wily 
Geisel never let The Man keep 
him down: He kept writing for 
the 
Jack-O-Lantern,
 adopting 
the pseudonym “Seuss” (his 
middle name) to get by the 
censors.