Early Career

Judge, Standard Oil/Advertising
Marriage and career, however, did not come quickly. Ted needed to earn a living before he could think of a life with Helen. He decided that he could make a living as a cartoonist and was thrilled when one of his submissions was published in The Saturday Evening Post. His work caught the eye of the editor for Judge, a New York weekly, and Ted was offered a staff position. Many of the characters from these sketches resemble the more-familiar characters of his books: Horton-esque elephants, turtles that look like Yertle, Nizzard-like birds, etc.

Standard Oil recognized Ted’s talent—or at the very least, his obsession with Flit, the pesticide Standard was manufacturing at the time—and offered him a job in their advertising department. Flit’s competitor, Fly-Tox, offered Ted a similar contract and in true Ted Geisel form, he flipped a coin to make the decision. As a result, the phrase “Quick, Henry, the Flit!” was introduced into the American vernacular. (Morgan, p. 65) In all, Ted spent over 15 years in advertising, primarily with Standard.

World War II
While Ted was not an advocate of war, he knew that war against Japan and Germany was imminent. Ted contributed anywhere from 3–5 urgent political cartoons each week to PM magazine, considered by many to be a liberal publication. Despite the steady work from PM, however, Ted wanted to contribute more to the war effort.

At 38, Ted was too old for the draft, so he sought a commission with naval intelligence. Instead, he wound up serving in Frank Capra’s Signal Corps (U.S. Army) making movies relevant to the war effort. He was introduced to the art of animation and developed a series of animated training films, which featured a trainee called Private Snafu. At first, many balked at the idea of a “cartoon” training series, but the younger recruits really responded to them. The Private Snafu assignments that Ted oversaw included scripts set to rhyme. (Morgan, p. 109)

Ted also contributed to two Academy Award–winning films during his stint as a soldier. Few copies of the films under their original titles remain (Your Job in Germany and Your Job in Japan), and it is unknown whether any copies of the Oscar-winning remakes, Hitler Lives and Design for Death, exist. (Morgan, pp. 118–120, and Cohen)

Publishing
Ted was still contributing to Life, Vanity Fair, Judge, etc., when an editor at Viking Press offered him a contract to illustrate a collection of children’s sayings called Boners. While the book received bland reviews, Ted’s illustrations were championed; he considered the opportunity his first official “big break” in children’s literature, and another turning point in his career. (Morgan, p. 72)

By this time, there was no question that Ted could make a living as an illustrator and cartoonist—but he also enjoyed writing. While traveling on the luxury liner M.S. Kungsholm, Ted became bothered by the rhythm of its engines. At Helen’s urging, he applied the incessant rhythm to his first children’s book, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street.

Though Mulberry Street is a delightful peek into the vivid imagination of a child, publishers in 1937 were not receptive; in fact, Ted presented his manuscript to 27 publishing houses and received 27 rejections. Discouraged, Ted literally bumped into an old Dartmouth friend who happened to work at Vanguard Press, a division of Houghton Mifflin. His friend offered to show the manuscript and illustrations to key decision-makers. Vanguard wound up publishing Mulberry Street, which was well received by librarians and reviewers.

His next career turning point was in response to Rudolf Flesch’s book and John Hersey’s article, both entitled Why Johnny Can’t Read; the premise for both article and book was that children’s books were boring. Hersey was outraged with the current primers, calling them “antiseptic” and the children in them “unnaturally clean.” He called for illustrations “that widen rather than narrow the associative richness the children give to the words,” and concluded that the work of artists like Geisel and Walt Disney would be more appropriate. (Morgan, pp. 153–54)

So in an unusual act of sharing an author, Houghton Mifflin and Random House asked Ted to write a children’s primer using 220 new-reader vocabulary words; the end result was The Cat in the Hat. Houghton Mifflin reserved textbook rights and Random House reserved retail-trade rights. While schools were hesitant to adopt it as an official primer, children and parents swarmed for copies.

Though Ted’s road to children’s books had many twists and turns, The Cat in the Hat catapulted him from pioneer in children’s literature to definitive children’s book author-illustrator, a position he has held unofficially for many decades since.

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