Dr Seuss has the last word.
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| Title: | Dr Seuss has the last word. |
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| Authors: | Charles Legge |
| Source: | Daily Mail. 3/16/2022, p52. 1p. |
| Abstract: | Compiled by James Black QUESTION Did Dr Seuss begin writing children's books as the result of a bet? THEODOR SEUSS GEISEL published his first children's book And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street under his pen-name Dr Seuss in 1937, but this was not as the result of a bet. However, one of his most popular books, 1960's Green Eggs And Ham, was written to win a wager. Generations of children have grown up enjoying rhyming works such as Horton Hears A Who! and How The Grinch Stole Christmas, which incorporate Dr Seuss's trademark 'ludicrous situations pursued with relentless logic'. After reading a Life magazine article in which Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Hersey blamed children's poor literacy skills on the dull Dick And Jane books they were forced to read, Dr Seuss wrote his most famous book, The Cat In The Hat, which uses only 236 different key words. He followed this with a series of Beginner Books for young readers, Ten Apples Up On Top!, Hop On Pop and Fox In Socks, with ever more restricted vocabularies. Bennett Cerf, his editor at Random House, jokingly made a $50 bet with Dr Seuss to write a book using no more than 50 different words. He took him up on this challenge and, in 1960, produced Green Eggs And Ham, which has 49 monosyllabic words and the three- syllable word 'anywhere'. According to Dr Seuss, Cerf never paid up on the bet. These are the 50 words that appear in Green Eggs And Ham: a, am, and, anywhere, are, be, boat, box, car, could, dark, do, eat, eggs, fox, goat, good, green, ham, here, house, I, if, in, let, like, may, me, mouse, not, on, or, rain, Sam, say, see, so, thank, that, the, them, there, they, train, tree, try, will, with, would, you. Glyn Williams, Wrexham. QUESTION What is the story of eccentric antiquarian bookdealer Solomon Pottesman? SOLOMON POTTESMAN (1904 to 1978) was one of London's great eccentrics. A self-taught bibliographer, he was known to the trade as Potty or Inky because he QUESTIONS : How did Cecil B. DeMille recreate the parting of the Red Sea in the 1956 film The Ten Commandments? D. B. Shaw, Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire. : In the ancient past, were there mountains taller than Everest? M. Thomas, Wolverhampton, W. Mids. : Are Christmas Island's famous red crabs being wiped out by ants? Martin Andrews, Carlisle. Q Q Q specialised in incunables — a book, pamphlet or document printed, and not handwritten, before the 16th century. He lived off buying and selling books, haunted every auction house in the capital and knew every sale price. According to his biographer Alan G. Thomas, Potty could not only tell you which reference book you needed to consult, but also its shelf number in the British Museum Reading Room. He would shamble into an auction wearing his ubiquitous cloth cap, brown shirt and dark corduroy jacket. If it was cold, he would wrap a few copies of a broadsheet newspaper around himself for warmth. He would sit at the front, mumbling in distress if he could not afford to buy a work. Potty could be infuriating. At the end of an auction, when bidders queued to pay for their purchases, he would take an age to write out a cheque. He would bring his own brown paper and string and carefully pack and parcel the books he had bought, slowing down the process of winding up sales. He was terrified that he would leave his belongings in a taxi, so at book fairs he could be spotted with dangling brown paper parcels tied to his wrists with string. His most valuable books were kept in a private vault under Harrods. His home was squalid and piled high with books. One visitor was surprised to be served tea in a milk bottle, the only suitable receptacle in the house. To protect his books from potential flooding, he had the water pipe to the toilet disconnected, using a bucket to flush instead. His other love was the cinema and he was known to watch the same film every night for a week. Despite his eccentricity, ... [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER] |
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| Abstract: | Compiled by James Black QUESTION Did Dr Seuss begin writing children's books as the result of a bet? THEODOR SEUSS GEISEL published his first children's book And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street under his pen-name Dr Seuss in 1937, but this was not as the result of a bet. However, one of his most popular books, 1960's Green Eggs And Ham, was written to win a wager. Generations of children have grown up enjoying rhyming works such as Horton Hears A Who! and How The Grinch Stole Christmas, which incorporate Dr Seuss's trademark 'ludicrous situations pursued with relentless logic'. After reading a Life magazine article in which Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Hersey blamed children's poor literacy skills on the dull Dick And Jane books they were forced to read, Dr Seuss wrote his most famous book, The Cat In The Hat, which uses only 236 different key words. He followed this with a series of Beginner Books for young readers, Ten Apples Up On Top!, Hop On Pop and Fox In Socks, with ever more restricted vocabularies. Bennett Cerf, his editor at Random House, jokingly made a $50 bet with Dr Seuss to write a book using no more than 50 different words. He took him up on this challenge and, in 1960, produced Green Eggs And Ham, which has 49 monosyllabic words and the three- syllable word 'anywhere'. According to Dr Seuss, Cerf never paid up on the bet. These are the 50 words that appear in Green Eggs And Ham: a, am, and, anywhere, are, be, boat, box, car, could, dark, do, eat, eggs, fox, goat, good, green, ham, here, house, I, if, in, let, like, may, me, mouse, not, on, or, rain, Sam, say, see, so, thank, that, the, them, there, they, train, tree, try, will, with, would, you. Glyn Williams, Wrexham. QUESTION What is the story of eccentric antiquarian bookdealer Solomon Pottesman? SOLOMON POTTESMAN (1904 to 1978) was one of London's great eccentrics. A self-taught bibliographer, he was known to the trade as Potty or Inky because he QUESTIONS : How did Cecil B. DeMille recreate the parting of the Red Sea in the 1956 film The Ten Commandments? D. B. Shaw, Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire. : In the ancient past, were there mountains taller than Everest? M. Thomas, Wolverhampton, W. Mids. : Are Christmas Island's famous red crabs being wiped out by ants? Martin Andrews, Carlisle. Q Q Q specialised in incunables — a book, pamphlet or document printed, and not handwritten, before the 16th century. He lived off buying and selling books, haunted every auction house in the capital and knew every sale price. According to his biographer Alan G. Thomas, Potty could not only tell you which reference book you needed to consult, but also its shelf number in the British Museum Reading Room. He would shamble into an auction wearing his ubiquitous cloth cap, brown shirt and dark corduroy jacket. If it was cold, he would wrap a few copies of a broadsheet newspaper around himself for warmth. He would sit at the front, mumbling in distress if he could not afford to buy a work. Potty could be infuriating. At the end of an auction, when bidders queued to pay for their purchases, he would take an age to write out a cheque. He would bring his own brown paper and string and carefully pack and parcel the books he had bought, slowing down the process of winding up sales. He was terrified that he would leave his belongings in a taxi, so at book fairs he could be spotted with dangling brown paper parcels tied to his wrists with string. His most valuable books were kept in a private vault under Harrods. His home was squalid and piled high with books. One visitor was surprised to be served tea in a milk bottle, the only suitable receptacle in the house. To protect his books from potential flooding, he had the water pipe to the toilet disconnected, using a bucket to flush instead. His other love was the cinema and he was known to watch the same film every night for a week. Despite his eccentricity, ... [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER] |
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| ISSN: | 03077578 |
