From Child’s Author To National Reading Legend: Dr. Seuss

Born March 2nd, 1904, in Springfield, Massachusetts, Theodor Geisel became a cartoonist and an artist before turning his hand to children’s literature. 1937’s And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street was the first to bear the name for which Geisel would become famous – Dr. Seuss.

Over the next half a century, Dr. Seuss produced children’s classic after children’s classic, creating memories and experiences that young readers would carry with them into adulthood. Horton Hears a Who, The Cat in the Hat, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, The Lorax, and Oh, the Places You’ll Go – these works alone would be enough to build a sterling reputation upon, but they represent just a sliver of Dr. Seuss’ total career output.

Dr. Seuss passed away in September 1991, aged 87. Today, on his birthday, we celebrate the life, work, and in particular, the literacy advocacy, of one of America’s finest children’s authors.

The Genesis of the Geisel’s Most Famous Works

The work of Dr. Seuss is famous for its rather idiosyncratic style. There’s a musicality to it, a rhythm, as words rattle by at a swift pace, skipping from sound to sound and syllable to syllable. Many authors have tried to imitate this over the years, some more successfully than others.

But this didn’t happen by accident. In the post-war years, literacy was a big concern in America. American children simply could not read to the level expected of them. So Dr. Seuss was commissioned to help out. He was provided with a list of 348 words that all first-graders should know and informed that his book must include at least 225 of these.

So Dr. Seuss wrote The Cat in the Hat and then applied this lyrical technique to the books he would write after this. The idea was twofold – One, to engage children and get them interested in reading. And two, to build phonic structures that children could easily repeat, reinforcing their literacy.

The Dr. Seuss Foundation

“The more that you read, the more things you will know,” Dr. Seuss famously wrote. “The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.”

This advocacy of reading and literacy in young people was something that Dr. Seuss kept with him his entire life. Today, several decades after the author’s death, this work is continued in the form of the Dr. Seuss Foundation.

The foundation focuses on assisting young children as they learn through singing, reading, writing, and creating. In the words of the foundation “children’s brains are 90% developed by the age of five… so we take a special interest in literacy development from birth through kindergarten.”

This is an example of how teachers, parents, and support workers, are building upon the legacy of Dr. Seuss. Using the author’s principles, they are fostering reading and writing skills in the next generation of young learners.

Read Across America Day

March 2nd is Dr. Seuss’ birthday. It’s also Read Across America Day, a festival of literacy and reading run by the National Education Association. As you might have gathered, this is not a coincidence. The date was specifically chosen as a way to honor the life, work, and legacy of the great children’s author.

An article by the charity Save The Children in the run-up to the 2025 event highlighted just how important Read Across America Day really is. More than 60% of low-income families do not have children’s books in the home, the article stated – a worrying statistic and one that could widen the economic divide already present in the U.S.

Fortunately, groups like Save The Children, the National Education Association, and others, are helping to remedy this sorry situation – and it’s fitting that one of their flagship events coincides with Dr. Seuss’ birthday.

Dr. Seuss’ Proud Literacy Legacy

Green Eggs and Ham, released in 1960, is believed to have sold more than 8 million copies. The 2018 adaptation of The Grinch, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, grossed more than $540 million. Around the world, the number of young lives touched by the work of Dr. Seuss is immeasurable.

Theodor Geisel would be very proud of all this, and he’d be happy that he was able to bring joy and happiness to so many people. But perhaps even more than this, he would be proud of the way in which his literacy advocacy has borne fruit, and how this advocacy is continued to this day.

There are many people out there who learned to read with Dr. Seuss. There are many people out there who gained their love of literature through Dr. Seuss. And there are many people out there who are very thankful indeed for the work of one of America’s greatest-ever children’s authors.