 Geisel gave two conflicting, partly fictionalized accounts of the book's creation in two articles, "How Orlo Got His Book" in The New York Times Book Review and "My Hassle with the First Grade Language" in the Chicago Tribune, both published on November 17, 1957. In "My Hassle with the First Grade Language", he wrote about his proposal to a "distinguished schoolbook publisher" to write a book for young children about "scaling the peaks of Everest at 60 degrees below". The publisher was intrigued but informed him that, because of the word list, "you can't use the word scaling. You can 't use the word peaks. You can't use Everest. You can 't use 60. You can't use degrees. You can 't ..." Geisel gave a similar account to Robert Cahn for an article in the July 6, 1957, edition of The Saturday Evening Post. In "My Hassle With the First Grade Language", he also told a story of the "three excruciatingly painful weeks" in which he worked on a story about a King Cat and a Queen Cat. However, "queen" was not on the word list, nor did his first grade nephew, Norval, recognize it. So Geisel returned to the work but could then think only of words that started with the letter "q", which did not appear in any word on the list. He then had a similar fascination with the letter "z", which also did not appear in any word on the list. When he did finally finish the book and showed it to his nephew, Norval had already graduated from the first grade and was learning calculus. Philip Nel notes, in his dissection of the article, that Norval was Geisel's invention. Geisel's niece, Peggy Owens, did have a son, but he was only a one-year-old when the article was published.
