Green Eggs and Ham!

Every summer, the women of my family get together for a “Quilt Bee”. Before you conjure up images of old bats in long dresses laboring over a patchwork,

let me clarify our “Quilt Bee”. Yes, we quilt (a little), but mostly, it is packed full of games, laughter, skits, and themed meals, which is where the famed green eggs and ham comes into the picture.

This year, my Grandma and I are paired to do a breakfast. The theme we came up with is… you guessed it,

Dr. Seuss.

So I thought I’d include a little fun fact post, a short little biography of the man himself.

Did you know?...

-Dr. Seuss’s real name is Theodor Seuss Geisel.

-While attending Dartmouth College, Geisel and his friends were caught throwing a drinking party. (During Prohibition!)

-The “Dr.” in Geisel’s penname came about in mock of his father’s unfulfilled hopes of Geisel earning a doctorate at Oxford. (His studies bored him, so he took a trip to Europe instead)

-Geisel worked in advertising for Standard Oil for more than 15 years, and various other magazines and newspapers drawing political cartoons.

-Too old for the draft, during World War II Geisel developed animated training films featuring a trainee named Private Snafu.

-Geisel’s first book, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, was rejected 27 times before being published.

-His most famous work, The Cat in the Hat, was developed after Houghton Mifflin asked him to write and illustrate a children’s primer that incorporated 225 vocabulary words.

-Geisel had no children. According to his widow Audrey, he was slightly afraid of children- and didn’t enjoy their company! “He couldn't just sit down on the floor and play with them,” she said.

-The book Green Eggs and Ham was written after someone bet Geisel he couldn’t write a book using only 50 words.

-In 1948 he lived in an old observatory tower!