Word: geisel
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Died. Helen Palmer Geisel, 69, wife of "Dr. Seuss" and mother to his zany literary menagerie of Grinches, Nerkles, and Star-Belly Sneetches; of undetermined causes; in La Jolla, Calif. As an American at Oxford in 1925, she urged her boy friend, Ted Geisel, to devote himself to his whimsical doodles. Geisel took her advice to heart, married her as well, and as Dr. Seuss, published 27 books...
...Geisel, an irrepressible child who has no children, is far from obsolete. Working out of a former observation tower atop Mount Soledad, highest point in La Jolla, he carefully turns his easel away from the distraction of the panoramic Pacific view, continues to create intriguing cartoon characters, pen funny-but moralistic-stories, mainly in verse. Scarcely a grade school or children's library in the U.S. is without his books, which are used mainly to help beginning readers get a kick out of reading. Geisel once based his book texts-as most publishers of reading primers still...
...bird's egg in a tree for eleven trying months, gets his reward when he hatches an elephant-bird. Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose is a model of kindness who lets animals ride on his horns because "a host, above all, must be nice to his guests." Geisel wrote about "star-bellied Sneetches," who thought they were better than "plain-bellied Sneetches," to score points against prejudice. He does not mind being called "the greatest moralist since Elsie Dinsmore," contends that it is both right and inevitable that "you can find a moral in anything you read...
...Massachusetts-born Geisel has a B.A. degree from Dartmouth and studied at Oxford University, but has had no art training since walking out on a high-school art teacher who refused to let him draw with his drawing board turned upside down. A cartoon of egg-nog-drinking turtles that he sold to Judge magazine in 1927 financed his marriage to fellow Oxford Student Helen Palmer, who helps him develop his story lines. His career got a big boost when his advertising cartoons for an insecticide made the caption "Quick, Henry, the Flit!" a common household quip...
...Geisel, who considers his work "logical insanity," gets a wry chuckle out of all the profound Ph.D. papers written about his books. He views himself -and most creative people-as those who "compensate for something-you wouldn't start building something new unless you were dissatisfied with what you've got." Perhaps, he adds with a smile, "we are all psychotic." Maybe so, but under the spell of Dr. Seuss, a cat that wears a hat and an elephant that sits in a tree somehow seem more normal than a Dick and Jane who chase a ball...