Review: excellent comprehensive look at the life and legend of Ted Geisel
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 04 2, 2013
Ted Geisel, famously known as Dr. Suess, lived a life of extreme tenacity and indomitable will that refused to allow what was birthed in him to die.  He faced along his career many rejections, both as a person, writer, and cartoonist, yet continued to dream until his desires turned to reality and in a rather enormous way.He was born into a family of means in Springfield, Massachusettes to German immigrants that came to America at the end of the 19th century from Bavaria.  From an early age he had a fascination with drawing goofy looking animals and at age 12 he would win a youth drawing contest.  He attended Dartmouth College and eventually became editor of the school's humor magazine.  From graduate school he would eventually marry Helen who aspired to be a school teacher.During the first 30 years of his life he wrote humorous short stories, articles and comic strips for a variety of publications.  The early 40's would find him in his niche as a writer of childrens books and in the 1950's his infamous How the Grinch Stole Christmas work emerged from a directive to make a book only out of words a first grader could read.  The Cat and the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham remained too a bestseller for over 50 years.Between his initial interests and his final popularity would be disappointments yet perseverance at its highest level.  His trophies in life however were great, winning an Oscar, becoming head of Random House Beginning Readers book division and winning the prestigeous Pulitzer Prize for a lifetime of children's literature contributions.Learn how his personal life would give way to an affair while his wife was dying.  As his health eventually deteriorated due to years of smoking, his image as a humorous writer would seem to bleed truth that his heart was somehow darkened in his private search for ultimate meaning and perhaps coming up personally short in attaining true happiness.From beginning to end this book chronicles the comprehensive life and mindset of a man that revolutionized childrens books.  This is a great read worth exploring.