Introduction

“They snap. They crackle. And also pop. If the books of other more staid authors are the oatmeal of children’s literature—solid, nourishing, and warm, but not much fun—those of Theodor Seuss Geisel are its Rice Krispies, blending nutrition with a happily explosive morning racket,” Warren T. Greenleaf wrote, in the educators’ magazinePrincipal, in May 1982.

And the year after that Dr. Seuss had become “a genre, a category, an institution,” Jonathan Cott said, in his bookPipers at the Gates of Dawn: The Wisdom of Children’s Literature.

Bennett Cerf, Geisel’s publisher at Random House, called him “a genius, pure and simple,” at a time when both William Faulkner and John O’Hara were being published by Random House. Rudolf Flesch said that Dr. Seuss would surely be read one hundred years from now, when Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, John Marquand and others may be forgotten.

Since Theodor (Ted) Geisel’s death in September 1991, there have been five additional Seuss books published:Daisy-Head Mayzie, the only Seuss book featuring a little girl (1995);The Secret Art of Dr. Seuss, illustrations Geisel completed during his lifetime which didn’t quite fit the Seuss books (1995);My Many Colored Days, with illustrations by Steve Johnson and Lou Fancher (1996); the collectionA Hatful of Seuss, andSeuss-isms.

Longtime Geisel family friends Judith and Neil Morgan published a rich, evocative authorized biography,Dr. Seuss and Mr. Geisel, in 1995, but there has not yet been a comprehensive anthology devoted to Dr. Seuss’s critical reception.

In “On Beyond Zebra with Dr. Seuss,” Rita Roth writes that Seuss was “beloved by his audience, yet, until comparatively recently, he was held at arm’s length by the children’s literature establishment.”

And Jonathan Cott writes, “Aside fromThe Cat in the Hat and its brilli