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Dr. Seuss<br />Based on the book, The Boy On Fairfield Street: How Ted Geisel Grew Up to Become Dr. Seuss<br />by Kathleen Krull and illustrated by Steve Johnson and Lou Francher<br />

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Dr. Seuss<br /> Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, was born on March 2, 1904, in Springfield, Massachusetts. His house was three blocks from the library and six blocks from the zoo.<br />

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Dr. Seuss<br /> Ted loved reading and animals. His father worked in the family business and also ran the zoo.<br />

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Dr. Seuss<br /> Ted’s mother read books to him from the library and also taught him to love rhymes and nonsense verse. She gave him his first stuffed animal, a dog he named Theophrastus.<br />

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Dr. Seuss<br />In the summers, Ted went fishing, learned to swim, and went to parades and the circus. He saw bands, exotic animals, and acrobats that later became part of his books.<br />

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Dr. Seuss<br /> Ted’s family was German. As the United States entered World War I against Germany, Ted was teased, chased, and beaten up by other students. He wasn’t very good at sports. During this time he learned about injustice.<br />

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Dr. Seuss<br /> More than anything in the world, Ted Geisel liked to draw imaginary animals based on the ones he saw in his father’s zoo.<br />

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Dr. Seuss<br /> Ted only took one art class in high school and his art teacher did not like what he drew. She told him he would never be successful as an artist. He quit the class.<br />

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Dr. Seuss<br />Ted eventually went to college at Dartmouth where he became the editor of the college humor magazine called the Jack-O-Lantern. While he was in college, he began using the name “Seuss” which was his middle name.<br />

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Dr. Seuss<br /> For a while, Ted thought he wanted to be a professor and went to Oxford University in England. When his classmate, Helen Palmer, encouraged him to pursuit his love for art and verse, he left college, married Helen, and returned to the United States to follow his dream.<br />

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Dr. Seuss<br /> After moving back to New York with Helen, Ted started working creating cartoons and working in advertising.<br />

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Dr. Seuss<br /> Dr. Seuss was 33 years old when he wrote his first children’s book. It is called And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street. It was rejected by 27 publishers before a friend of Ted’s agreed to publish it.<br />

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Dr. Seuss<br />In 1957, Dr. Seuss published The Cat in the Hat. People were worried that children were not learning to read because the available books were boring. Dr. Seuss wrote the book using easy reading words. It was a great success.<br />

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Dr. Seuss<br />A friend of Dr. Seuss bet him that he couldn’t write a book using only 50 words. Dr. Seuss won the bet and wrote Green Eggs and Ham.<br />

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Dr. Seuss<br />One Christmas, when he was looking in the mirror, Dr. Seuss realized he had lost his enthusiasm for Christmas. He looked like a Grinch. This led him to write How the Grinch Stole Christmas.<br />

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Dr. Seuss<br />Dr. Seuss wrote books about issues that he thought were important. These include: Horton Hears a Who, Yertle the Turtle, The Sneetches, and The Lorax.<br />

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Dr. Seuss<br /> Dr. Seuss died in 1991 at the age of 87. He left behind a legacy of wonderful children’s books that are still read and loved today. There is a library in San Diego, California, that is named after Theodor Seuss Geisel.<br />