 This article caught the attention of William Spaulding, who had met Geisel during the war and who was then the director of Houghton Mifflin's education division. Spaulding had also read the best-selling 1955 book Why Johnny Can't Read by Rudolf Flesch. Flesch, like Hersey, criticized primers as boring but also criticized them for teaching reading through word recognition rather than phonics. In 1955, Spaulding invited Geisel to dinner in Boston where he proposed that Geisel create a book "for six- and seven-year olds who had already mastered the basic mechanics of reading". He reportedly challenged, "Write me a story that first-graders can 't put down!"
