You can read them in a box,
You can read them with a fox!
They discovered seven new Seuss stories you see,
Filled with crafty rhymes for you to read.
But don’t go to the store yet, please remember…
They won’t be published until September!
Yes, you’ve got it right—seven new Dr. Seuss stories have been discovered, and they will be published in a new book called The Bippolo Seed and Other Lost Stories by Dr. Seuss.
The stories were published in the 1950s in magazines, but they have never been put into book form before. They are being published by Random House.
Charles D. Cohen discovered the stories. He is a dentist but his hobby is studying Dr. Seuss. He has the largest private collection of Seuss memorabilia (toys, clothing, books) in the world.
The new book will have seven stories in it, including Steak for Supper, about fantastic creatures who follow a boy home hoping for a steak dinner; The Bippolo Seed, in which a scheming feline leads an innocent duck to make a bad decision, and The Strange Shirt Spot, which was the inspiration for the bathtub-ring scene in The Cat in the Hat Comes Back.
Some wacky facts about Dr. Seuss
* His real name was Theodor (Ted) Geisel.
* His car license plate was GRINCH.
* He wrote 44 books for children – hundreds of millions of copies have been printed.
* Some of his most popular books are: And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street (his first book, published in 1937), The Cat in the Hat (1957), Green Eggs and Ham (1960), One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish (1960), Oh, the Places You’ll Go! (1990) and Hop on Pop (1963).
* He lived in Massachusetts in the U.S.; he died in 1991.
* He won a Pulitzer Prize for Literature, an Academy Award, three Emmy Awards and a Grammy.
* Why did he change his name from Geisel to Seuss? He got in trouble in college and the Dean said he could no longer be editor of the school magazine where he published his cartoons. Instead of stopping, he just published his cartoons under different names: L. Pasteur, D. G. Rossetti, T. Seuss and Seuss. He used “Dr.” to jokingly make his name sound more important.
* He nearly became a scholar but his girlfriend, Helen Palmer, (who he married in 1927) pointed out that he liked drawing a lot better than studying. He agreed!
* His first job out of college was drawing ads, including an ad for a bug spray called Flit. Everyone knew his ad’s catchphrase, “Quick, Henry – the Flit!”
* He started writing for children because his contract with the ad agency didn’t allow him to write for adults!
* Seuss did not have any children with his first wife, Helen Palmer. However, they “made up” lots of pretend children: Chrysantemum-Pearl, Norval, Wally, Wickersham, Miggles, Boo-Boo and Thnud. They would invite neighbourhood children over to pose with them for their annual Christmas card and tell everyone, “these are our children.”
* More than two dozen publishers rejected his first book, And To Think That I Saw it On Mulberry Street. Seuss was walking down Madison Avenue, about to throw his book away, when he met up with an old school chum, Mike McClintock. McClintock was an editor with Vanguard Press, and immediately gave Seuss his first book contract.
* Several of his books (Yertle the Turtle, The Sneetches, Horton Hears a Who!) were written as metaphors against prejudice and racism. The famous phrase from Horton, “A person’s a person, no matter how small,” offers “a rhymed lesson in protection of minorities and their rights,” the Des Moines Register wrote in a book review.
* He wrote Cat in the Hat because he thought that children weren’t learning to read because most beginner-reader books were too boring.
* He wrote Green Eggs and Ham after someone bet him he couldn’t write a book using less than 50 words.
Related Links
The publisher of the new books is Random House.
Random House’s Dr. Seuss website.
See how many Dr. Seuss books you recognize.
Read more about Dr. Seuss’s fascinating life.
CURRICULUM CONNECTIONS – By Jonathan Ophek
Writing/Discussion Prompt
Given how popular Dr. Seuss’ books are, you probably have read several of his books in your lifetime already. What do you think is the secret of his success? In other words, why do you think so many adults and children love reading and listening to his stories?
Reading Prompt
The author of today’s article uses bullet points to organize the information in the article. How do bullet points help readers understand and remember what they are reading?
Primary & Junior
Identify a variety of text features and explain how they help readers understand texts (OME, Reading: 2.3).
Intermediate
Identify a variety of text features and explain how they help communicate
meaning (OME, Reading: 2.3).
Grammar Feature: Proper Nouns
A proper noun refers to a specific person, place, or thing. For example, the nouns: Pulitzer Prize for Literature, Academy Award, Emmy Awards, and Grammy are proper nouns because they are specific awards. Proper nouns are always capitalized.
Add 2 examples of proper nouns to each category:
Person: Barack Obama, Taylor Swift, _______________ , _______________ .
Place: Saskatoon, Trois-Rivieres, _________________, _______________ .
Thing: Oreos, Toronto FC, ___________________ , __________________ .
