On March 2nd is Read Across America Day.
It's a day when schools across the United States inspire young children to read.
Today, we're going to talk about reading, and specifically about Dr.
Seuss, who's known here as the father of children's literature.
I hope you enjoy this feature episode.
When I was in elementary school, my best friend's name was Annie.
Annie came from a Mormon family.
Her dad was the president of the Mormon church, and Annie and I were a lot alike.
Now, despite having very similar personalities and similar activities, we both played flute in the school band and sang in the choir.
Her family and home life was very different from mine.
Annie was one of six kids, and her family was much more musical, and they consumed way more vegetables, than anyone I'd ever met.
Her family also didn't have a TV.
At nighttime, Annie and her brothers and sisters would sit down and read.
In fact, I remember having to fill out reading logs for school.
And those were sort of documents where we had to track how much we read per week.
And her mom always signed off on Annie having read four to five hours a week.
She signed off on it.
In other words, she confirmed that Annie had read four to five hours.
I used to compare her reading log to my own.
I'd only read about one and a half to two hours in a week.
We were about 10 years old at the time, and I can't remember whether I was jealous of her accomplished reading log or just impressed by it.
Maybe a little of both.
The point is, I'll never forget how fast she finished long chapter books.
She'd store the majority of them on her bookshelves.
And bookshelves were everywhere.
They were in her living room, the entryway, the hallway.
The first time I went in her house, I remember thinking, this looks like that scene from Beauty and the Beast, where beauty discovers the castle library.
Anyway, if you're listening to this podcast, you're a learner.
Perhaps you're an avid reader like Annie.
Hats off to you if you are.
Reading is such a healthy skill to be able to pause the real world and immerse oneself into the magic of a story, and it also gets the imagination working.
For a kid to experience that from a young age, well, that's an incredible gift.
As an adult, or as someone who can read, it's sort of a gift we can give to someone.
We can inspire others to read.
We can share the skill of reading as well.
So how can we make kids fall in love with reading?
Well, Annie might say, first of all, get rid of your TV, which is unrealistic for a lot of us.
I'd say a good start is introduce kids to good books.
And what better author to introduce than Theodor Geisel?
Theodor Geisel was an American author, more commonly known as Dr.
Seuss, and his classic rhyming children's books fill the bookshelves of many family homes across the U .S.
You may know him already.
He's responsible for How the Grinch Stole Christmas, The Cat in the Hat, One Fish two fish, red fish, blue fish, and even green eggs and ham.
I do not like green eggs and ham.
I do not like them, Sam I am.
Today, you'll hear all about Dr.
Seuss, and if I'm honest, I'm a little bit disappointed in myself that it took 140 episodes to share his story.
Better late than never, though.
Let's do this. Hi, everybody.
My name is Shawna, and this is the American English Podcast.
My goal here is to teach you the English spoken in the United States.
Through common expressions, pronunciation tips, and interesting cultural snippets or stories, I hope to keep this fun, useful, and interesting.
Let's do it. Once upon a time, there was a cold -hearted man who lived in a cave on the highest mountain near Whoville.
He was so cruel. He tried to steal Christmas away from the Who's, who lived in the village down below.
He stole their wreaths and their trees, the stockings that hung by their fireplaces.
He even stole their Christmas feast.
That man's name was the Grinch, and he was famously described as having a heart two sizes too small.
Many American families enjoy watching the original, animated How the Grinch Stole Christmas when December rolls around each year.
The songs, the characters, and the storyline are so clever, funny, and well done, it's hard to imagine that the story was written in 1957 and that the short film came out in 1966.
So, who was the animator and author behind The Grinch?
Let's flash back to Springfield, Massachusetts on March 2nd, 1904.
That day, a baby boy was born, and his name was Theodor Seuss Geisel.
His parents and friends called him Teddy, or Ted for short.
As a child, little Ted was greatly influenced by his family.
His mother was a hefty woman, 6 '2 and 200 pounds, who was the daughter of a local German baker.
She grew up with a love of sweets and words.
While making dessert at home, she'd sing the ingredients in her recipes.
She always played with words until they rhymed.
She even sang them to her kids before they went to sleep.
As a kid, Ted took it all in.
And when he got older, he could still sing that list of pie names just as she did.
apple, mince, lemon, peach, apricot, pineapple, blueberry, coconut, custard, and squash.
Ted later attributed his admiration of words to his mother.
Henrietta was her name, Nettie for short.
Nettie would read to him in German and in English every night before bed, usually telling stories that playfully taught values and morals, such as how to be a proper guest, how to be obedient, or how to have proper etiquette.
Etiquette means expected behavior and good manners.
While his mother was warm and playful, his father was quiet and hardworking.
He was in charge of the family brewery called Kalmbach & Geisel.
Although Springfield, Massachusetts had many German immigrants at the time, Americans had a hard time pronouncing that name.
So they called the brewery Comeback & Guzzle.
To guzzle means to drink quickly.
The brewery was very successful.
That is, up until World War I.
Ted was almost 13 years old when the war broke out, and overnight, a strong anti -German sentiment was growing across the U .S.
He felt it in his small town.
All of Ted's classmates knew of his German heritage.
And of course, the brewery and bakery were local staples.
So he'd get picked on, Just like other German -American children at school.
To pick on means to harass verbally.
They picked on Ted because he had German relatives.
They called him names, like Drunken Hans.
According to the documentary Rhymes and Reasons on the Theodor Seuss Geisel YouTube channel, Dr.
Seuss was a bit of a loner, or perhaps you could call him a curious independent.
The point is, he didn't enjoy spending time in groups.
He spent much of his childhood with his sister, Marnie, who was two years older than him.
They'd play in the open fields near home, and they'd spend ample time at the nearby Forest Park Zoo, which they loved.
Ted examined the animals.
At times, he'd even sketch them in his little notebook.
He even drew a mural on Marnie's wall of the animals he saw.
His parents encouraged him to draw.
At first, he tried to make animals realistic, but over time, he preferred cartoon -like animals.
If he drew a cow, it'd have wings.
If there was a camel, he might have ten humps on its back.
At school, English was his favorite subject.
When it was time to apply for college, he followed in the footsteps of his English teacher, who went to Dartmouth.
Dartmouth is an Ivy League school in New Hampshire.
It was pretty rural, the architecture was beautiful, and he got involved in the school publication called Jack -O -Lantern, or Jacko for short.
It was there that he found like -minded people, and his stories and drawings were not only appreciated, but they were so loved he became editor -in -chief.
What's funny is that Ted was a jokester.
He never took life seriously.
He was once caught putting fake pearls and oysters at a house party.
Once, he attended a charity event at a La Jolla department store and disappeared.
Where did Ted go? They found him upstairs with a marker in his hand, changing the prices on all of the shoes because he thought they were too expensive.
In college, he once got in trouble for drinking gin during Prohibition.
Prohibition lasted from 1920 to 1933 in the U .S., and it was a time when the sale of alcohol was strictly prohibited.
It wasn't allowed. His dad's brewery got shut down because of it.
One night, Ted was caught drinking gin with some friends and was banned from his position as editor -in -chief.
But Ted found a way around it.
He just kept writing with different names.
Sometimes he'd just sign his work as Le Sieg, which was Geisel backwards.
Sometimes he'd use Soiss.
Soiss was his middle name.
When Ted wasn't escaping in his art and his writing, he was dreaming of life and adventure overseas.
At 21, on the day of graduation, he went to England for the first time in hopes of becoming a professor of English literature at Oxford University.
While in class, though, when the teacher was speaking, he would doodle.
To doodle means to draw playfully, without much thought.
Think back to your school days.
Did you doodle in the margins of your paper, so in the area where you weren't writing your class notes?
Ted did. He drew cute little characters and goofy animals that caught the attention of a woman sitting behind him, Helen Marin Palmer.
When they got to talking, he told her he dreamed of becoming a professor, and she told him he was crazy.
In her eyes, Ted was an artist.
The two of them hit it off, and eventually, he started to take her seriously.
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Terms apply. After his first year at Oxford, he dropped out to pursue a career in drawing.
But he liked Helen.
He wanted to keep her around.
The problem was he was broke.
First things first, he had to make money as an artist.
But how? The answer was pretty simple.
Advertising. On July 16, 1927, after many attempts trying to get his artwork published, the Saturday Evening Post paid him $25 for a cartoon.
It was his first real money with art, and with it, he moved to New York City.
New York City at the time was home to the advertising industry.
If he wanted to make it big, that's where he had to be.
Times Square, Billboards, Broadway.
But with a mere $25 in his pocket, he got a reality check.
All he could afford was to move into a small, dingy, rat -infested apartment with a buddy from Dartmouth.
He once told friends that they'd spend the evenings whacking rats with long canes.
Is that true, or was he exaggerating?
It's hard to say. Ted loved stretching the truth no matter what story he told.
Fortunately, he wasn't whacking rats for long.
New York is where his career took off.
To take off is a phrasal verb that means to succeed.
New York is where his career took off.
His roommate helped him get a job at Judge, a satirical magazine that offered him a steady salary of $75 a week.
He was making bank, and it was enough money to marry Helen.
Helen was great for Ted.
She was smart and sophisticated, and he trusted her opinion.
They worked great as a team.
And with her in the picture, he started to make a name for himself.
Literally. He made himself what we call a pen name.
In English, a pen name is a fake or alternative name that an author goes by.
It's also known as a pseudonym, with a silent P in the beginning.
Pseudonym. Theodore Geisel's pen name was Dr.
Seuss. Seuss was both his middle name and his mother's maiden name.
She pronounced it Soiss.
She was German, after all.
But Seuss was the pronunciation that stuck.
As for the doctor in the beginning?
Well, we know Ted wanted to get his doctorate from Oxford, remember?
He dropped out. Although he didn't become a real doctor, he could make it part of his pen name.
Why not? Dr. Seuss it was.
Life in advertising went well for Dr.
Seuss, and it's really thanks to FLIT, a bug spray brand.
Before it was common to have air conditioners at home, people opened their windows at night to cool their houses down.
With the cool air came bugs such as flies and mosquitoes.
Ted was creative. He drew a knight in shining armor in a room with a dragon who was frustrated because he couldn't sleep.
The caption read, darn it all, another dragon.
And just after, I'd sprayed the whole house with flit.
He even thought of a tagline for them.
A tagline is also known as a catchphrase or a slogan.
For example, McDonald's is I'm loving it.
Apple, think different.
L 'Oreal, because you're worth it.
Nike, just do it. You get the point.
So he created a tagline or a catchphrase for Flit, which was, Quick, Henry, the Flit.
Whenever there were bugs, people would quote Seuss's tagline.
It was wildly popular.
Quick, Henry, the Flit.
Sales were so great, he was hired on projects for Standard Oil and other companies.
And in general, he just did well.
If you think back to U .S.
history, you probably remember that the Great Depression hit on October 24, 1929.
Times were rough for many Americans, but not for Ted.
Flitt hired him for $12 ,000 a year, which was a lot of money at the time.
When he started making that good money, he could live out some of the fantasies he had.
He and Helen started traveling extensively, and together they hit over 30 different countries.
Each time they returned from a trip, his characters would be more imaginative, his stories more clever.
It was around then that he considered selling his own work.
But there was a hiccup along the way.
In 1931,
