How did Seuss get his start?
Weekly Statistic

By age 5, a typical middle-class child recognizes 22 letters of the alphabet, compared to 9 for a child from a low-income family.
Word of the Week

INVEIGLE: (v)  To win over by coaxing, flattery or artful talk. To obtain by cajolery.

Words Have Power

"Love is what we are born with. Fear is what we learn. Love is the essential reality and our purpose on earth. To be consciously aware of it, to experience love in ourselves and others, is the meaning of life. Meaning does not lie in things. Meaning lies in us." Marianne Williamson
 
"The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little ways, every day." David Foster Wallace
 
"Anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you." David Whyte

How did Prohibition & DDT invent DrSeuss?

Theodore Seuss Giesel was born on March 2, 1904. When he was a college student at Dartmouth, he got caught drinking in the dorms during Prohibition. He was kicked off the school's humor magazine, but continued contributing under the pseudonym, Seuss

Seuss used this pen name as a cartoonist for various magazines and advertising departments. His advertisements for the insecticide, FLIT (containing DDT), became nationally famous, which led to an offer to illustrate children's books. This inspired his own book, And to Think that I Saw it on Mulberry Street. It was rejected 27 times before it was published in 1937.

He didn't become the icon he is today until 1954. After LIFE magazine wrote an article about children's increasingly low reading levels (the rise of the word gap?), Seuss wrote a book with all 220 Dolch site words (the most commonly used words for early readers). The book? The Cat in the Hat. Over his lifetime, Seuss wrote over 60 books.

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