Anna+Wanger

**__​​Theodor Seuss Geisel-- Outline__**


 * __Thesis Statement:__** Theodor Geisel impacted children's literature through making books so children can read easier, actually writing the books with a different rhyming style, and teaching the readers lessons through their reading.


 * __Topic:__** How did Theodor Geisel impact the world of children's literature?

1. Once, when reading an article about how children more and more are having difficulties learning to read he decided to started writing words to go along with the cartoons he had drawn, inspiring the easy-to-read books we now know. 2. According to Ruth MacDonald of the Chicago Tribune, "He perfected the art of telling great stories with a vocabulary as small as sometimes fifty-two or fifty-three words."
 * __A.__** He made books in a way to make it easier for children to learn how to read...

1. He said "Children want the same thing we want. [adults] To laugh, to be challenged, to be entertained, and delighted." So he began writing cartoons and books that morals could not only apply to the children reading the book but also adults making them easier to understand from a child's stand-point. 2. Rhyming words not only make it easier for children to read the words but it also is more "entertaining" for children to read, therefore by Geisel ​creating this sing-song rhyming style it made easier for children to read the books and it also started a new way of writing childrens books.
 * __B.__** He mastered word rhyme and making the moral of all his books to educate the children reading the books...

1. He made the books so the children couldn't only understand it but read it and he incorporated messages into the reading to teach kids lessons. 2. All of his books have certain morals that can apply to all people.
 * __C.__** He taught the readers lessons through their reading...


 * __ Wiki notes-- Online sources __**


 * http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=81203 **


 * During the second half of the twentieth century Geisel "had a tremendous impact on children's reading habits and the way reading is taught and approached in the school system."
 * It happened by chance that Theodor Geisel even started writing children's books.
 * On the way back from Europe in 1936 he amused himself by putting together a nonsense poem to the rhythm of the ship's engine. Later he drew pictures to illustrate the rhyme and in 1937 published the result as And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, his first children's book.
 * The success of his early books confirmed Geisel as an important new children's writer.
 * However, it was //The Cat in the Hat// that solidified his reputation and revolutionized the world of children's book publishing.
 * When he wrote //The Cat in the Hat// he used a small vocabulary, simple enough for a young child to understand.
 * Young children were reading older books that weren't meant for children to understand so by Geisel writing //The Cat in the Hat// in that sort of way it made children want to read and they could understand what was actually happening. "Revolutionizing the world of children's book publishing."
 * "only 223 different words, . . . has created a story in rhyme which presents an impelling incentive to read."
 * The enthusiastic reception of //The Cat in the Hat// led Geisel to found Beginner Books, a publishing company specializing in easy-to-read books for children.
 * Geisel and Beginner Books created many modern classics for children, from //Green Eggs and Ham,// about the need to try new experiences, and //Fox in Socks,// a series of increasingly boisterous tongue-twisters, to //The Lorax,// about environmental preservation, and //The Butter Battle Book,// a fable based on the nuclear arms race. (In other word he was also teaching kids lessons in his books.)
 * Geisel wrote his last book about being human and getting old, it was more autobiographical then his normal books and as the Los Angeles Times says "We should all be lucky enough to get old the way this man, and Dr. Seuss himself, has gotten old."
 * Every year on March 2nd (Geisel's Birthday) is "Seuss Day," where everyone remembers his works and how he reinvented the way children's literature is written.
 * Publishers Weekly: "He revolutionized how children learned to read, and so we knew the celebration had to equal the passion people have for his books."
 * New York Times: "probably the best-loved and certainly the best-selling children's book writer of all time."
 * His "rhythmic verse rivals Lewis Carroll's," stated Stefan Kanfer in //Time,// "and his freestyle drawing recalls the loony sketches of Edward Lear."
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%;">Geisel had originally intended to become a professor of English, but "became frustrated when he was shunted into a particularly insignificant field of research."
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%;">After leaving graduate school in 1926, Geisel worked for a number of years as a freelance magazine cartoonist, selling cartoons and humorous prose pieces to the major humor magazines of the 1920s and 1930s.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%;">how important an influence Dr. Seuss is–acknowledged or not, consciously or unconsciously–to metrical poets of my generation. He gave us part of our ear for rhyme and our ear for rhythm.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%;">Of course, Seuss is subversive too–what could be more subversive in a Puritan society than to announce to kids that “Fun is good”? We romanticize childhood to the extent that we shun adulthood, but being a child is also to be helpless and in the power of others (as anyone with a toddler can tell you, this is extremely frustrating!). Yet “A person’s a person no matter how small.”
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%;">Dr. Seuss’s nimble prosody is to pick up any other contemporary book of children’s verse. So much of it is so lackluster–full of clunky, predictable rhymes, barely scanning, and larded with filler.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%;">"poetryfoundation.org." //http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=81203//. Poetry Foundation, 2010. Web. 29 Apr 2010. <http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=81203>. ||

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 132%;">[|******http://www.carolhurst.com/authors/drseuss.html******]

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%;">Hurst, Carol. "carolhurst.com." //http://www.carolhurst.com/authors/drseuss.html//. Rebecca Otis, 2010. Web. 29 Apr 2010. <http://www.carolhurst.com/authors/drseuss.html>.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%;">He started his Cat in the Hat series when he read an article by the novelist John Hersey who observed that the early readers used in schools were pallid and idiotic.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%;">old that they had to be because they used only words on the Dolch reading list, Seuss took 223 of those words and created a funny, zany book worth reading.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%;">Together with his wife Helen Palmer, he launched a whole line of Beginner Books some of which he wrote and illustrated.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%;">Still others were done by other authors and illustrators but they all used the same, scholastically approved word lists, and revolutionized children's beginning reading books.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%;">Seuss was one of the few authors of children's books who could get away with moralizing. His zany illustrations and rhymes allow the reader to enjoy the books and recognize the morals without feeling the weight of a sermon.

[|******http://childrensbooks.about.com/cs/authorsillustrato/a/drseuss.htm******]

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%;">"childrensbooks.about.com." //http://childrensbooks.about.com/cs/authorsillustrato/a/drseuss.htm//. about.com, 2010. Web. 29 Apr 2010. <http://childrensbooks.about.com/cs/authorsillustrato/a/drseuss
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%;">After being asked about how his books impacted childrens literature: A revolutionary one. He has been credited with killing off "Dick and Jane", the sterile heroes of older children's books, replacing them with clever rhymes, plot twists and rebellious heroes who do the unexpected. The Cat in the Hat was commissioned following publication in 1955 of an influential book, Why Johnny Can't Read, which said children were being held back by boring books. An article under the same name in Life magazine called for more imaginative illustration, and named Dr Seuss as a good example of what could be done. Now one in four American children receive Dr Seuss as their first book.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%;">Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss) and his children's books have had a lasting impact on children's literature.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%;">Dr. Seuss once said, "Children want the same things we want. To laugh, to be challenged, to be entertained, and delighted." Dr. Seuss' books certainly provide that for children.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%;">children. Among the factors cited by the report was the fact that children were bored by the books that were available at the beginning reader level. His publisher sent Geisel a list of 400 words and challenged him to come up with a book that would use about 250 of the words. Geisel used 236 of the words for //The Cat in the Hat//, and it was an instant success.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%;">The Dr. Seuss books definitively proved that it was possible to create engaging books with a limited vocabulary when the author/illustrator had both imagination and wit.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%;">The plots of the Dr. Seuss books are entertaining and often teach a lesson, from the importance of taking responsibility for the earth and one another to learning what is really important.

[|******http://www.californiamuseum.org/exhibits/halloffame/inductee/theodor-geisel******]


 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%;">His The Cat in the Hat is a landmark in the evolution of children’s literature.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%;">Challenged to write a primer using a vocabulary of only 225 words, Dr. Seuss created a captivating tale that became the prototype of the best-selling Beginner Books series.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%;">In this collection, he combined engaging stories, outrageous illustrations, and playful sounds to teach basic reading skills.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%;">"californiamuseum.org." //http://www.californiamuseum.org/exhibits/halloffame/inductee/theodor-geisel//. California Museum, 2008. Web. 29 Apr 2010. <http://www.californiamuseum.org/exhibits/halloffame/inductee/theodor-geisel>. ||

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 132%;">[|******http://www.notablebiographies.com/Fi-Gi/Geisel-Theodor.html******]

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%;">"noteablebiographies.org." //http://www.notablebiographies.com/Fi-Gi/Geisel-Theodor.html//. advameg, 2010. Web. 29 Apr 2010. [].
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%;">Admired among fellow authors and editors for his honesty and hard work, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, accoring to Ruth MacDonald in the Chicago Tribune, "Perfected the art of telling great stories with a vocabulary as small as sometimes fifty-two or fifty-tree words."
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%;">Was not only a mast of word and rhyme and an original and eccentric artist.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%;">Gerald Harrison, president of Random House's merchandise division, declared in Publisher's Weekly, "but down deep, I think he was basically an educator. He helped teach kids that reading was a joy and not a chore... For those of us who worked with him, he taught us to strive for excellence in all the books we published.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%;">Geisel's last two books spent several months on the bestsellers lists and include themes that appealed to adults as well as children.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%;">(To his death in 1991) Theodor Geisel remains the most famous and influential name in childrens literature.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%;">Though Theodor Geisel books sometimes included morals, they sounded less like behavioral guidelines and more like, "listen to your feelings" and "take care of the environment," universal ideas that would win over all the hearts of kids from around the workd.

**__Wiki notes-- Print sources__**

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">__News Week 2000__ <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">"Theodor Geisel." //News Week 2000// 2000, Print.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">The reviews it garnered, though, instantly signaled "innovative coup," defying and exasperating long established educational conventions through its galloping but controlled verse.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Dr. Seuss had an imagination with a long tail
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Parents those same kids are wittily incited to defy
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Dr Seuss on writing for adults: "Adults are just obsolete children, and to hell with 'em."
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">With the Apogee of baby booms at the peak of Seuss's career, with all the children he sold so tons of books.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Seuss continues to be lauded as an advocate of children whose stories likewise appeal to adults
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Seuss is credited with having engineered a sea change in literature for children, if not for America literature and language itself.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Though Dr. Suess had no children he claims to have written children books for his great understanding of children
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Lines from fox in socks have entered the Oxford Companion to the English Language
 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%; line-height: 115%;">Teachers still recommend Seuss books for beginning readers, especially kids who are struggling.
 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%; line-height: 115%;">The repetitive rhymes and nonsense words can help youngsters understand the relationship between symbols and sounds.
 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%; line-height: 115%;">But even more important, his works inspire a lifelong love of reading.
 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%; line-height: 115%;">1985 Geisel was invited to speak to the members of Princeton's graduating class.
 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%; line-height: 115%;">As he walked toward the lectern, the entire class stood up in unison and chanted "Green Eggs and Ham." That's genius.
 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%; line-height: 115%;">It was Cerf who bet Geisel $50 that he couldn't write a book using just 50 words.
 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%; line-height: 115%;">The result, in 1960, was "Green Eggs and Ham," Geisel's most popular work.
 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%; line-height: 115%;">The bet came after the enormous success of "The Cat in the Hat," written with 225 words in an attempt to kill off the tedious Dick-and-Jane primers of the 1950s.
 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%; line-height: 115%;">In their biography, "Dr. Seuss & Mr. Geisel," the Morgans say the 225 words came from a first-grade vocabulary list provided by William Spaulding, the head of Houghton Mifflin's education division, who was eager to find a way to get more kids to read.
 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%; line-height: 115%;">Geisel read the list over and over and couldn't figure out any way to create a story out of it. Finally, in desperation, he decided to find the first two words that rhymed and make them the title.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%;">"I found 'cat'; and then I founf 'hat'." he said. "That's genius, you see!"

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;"> __Theodor Seuss Geisel__ <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Kibler, Myra. //Theodor Seuss Geisel//. 1st edition. Gale, Cengage Learning, 2007. (ONLINE). Print.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;"> Once referred to by Robert Wilson of the //New York Times Book Review// as "probably the best-loved and certainly the best-selling children's book writer of all time,"
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;"> Dr. Seuss, initiated the Random House division Beginner Books and gave new life to juvenile literature.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">From his first children's book in 1937, //And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street//, to his recent //The Butter Battle Book// (1984), Dr. Seuss has provided his audience with entertainment as well as an occasional moral lesson.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">In 1937 when //And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street// was published, it was very different from the traditional books for children ... Eventually to start the revolution as to how childrens books are written
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">In 1957 Seuss published a book that more than any other influenced the market in children's primers. John Hershey had published an article in //Life// in 1954 titled "Why Johnny Can't Read." He complained about the dull, repetitious primers used to teach reading and stated the need for livelier books. Seuss responded with //The Cat in the Hat//.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Using a limited vocabulary, he told a story that was exciting--even anxiety-producing--with one of the most engaging characters in children's literature: a talking cat in a striped hat.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">The structure of the book is typical of Seuss's work.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Despite the sameness of many of the Beginner Books, the accomplishment is considerable
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">They are easy to read but bright, boisterous, and engaging.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">They most certainly changed the nature of early learning materials.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">The immensely popular television program for children, //Sesame Street//, was developed as perhaps the farthest extension yet of what Geisel began.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Whether these high stimulus materials prepare a child to move on to more subdued materials or whether they leave him deaf and blind to subtle shades and suggested meanings will be for others to determine, but as Geisel explains to Miles Corwin of the //Los Angeles Times//, "Nonsense wakes up the brain cells. And it helps develop a sense of humor, which is awfully important in this day and age."
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Dr. Seuss has always been a moralist taking stands against prejudice, tyranny, ecological abuse, and other flaws of human beings individually and collectively. In //The Butter Battle Book// he takes a tough moral stand in showing children that their elders have been foolish, and their foolishness has become dangerous to the survival of the world.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Dr. Seuss knows what children find humorous and just what limits of fantasy a child will permit.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Critics have debated whether Seuss is primarily a writer and only a cartoonist in his drawings or whether his real creativity is in the drawings, and the verse is only doggerel.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">who in so many other books showed children how to escape reality by the power of the creative imagination, seems to see no creative antidote for the modern threat of nuclear war.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">That skill at integration along with his natural with and humor and his high standards of quality help to explain why he is so successful. His books have sold millions of copies, and he has won dozens of awards for his work, including an Emmy Award in 1977 for //Halloween is Grinch Night//, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award in 1980, the Regina Medal in 1982, and a Pulitzer Prize in 1984.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;"> His options appear to him as animated creatures called Hunches. The difficulty of making decisions is visually supported in a series of doorways beyond which other doorways can be seen.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Dr. Seuss has definately invented how childrens literature is written today.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Other authors continue to copy the style to which he originally wrote his work.