A little more about Dr. Seuss

Education reporters end up writing the same stories year after year. I’ve written dozens of stories about the first day of school, graduations and everything in between.

Read Across America is one of those events I have written about every year of my career.

But as I researched the event for my story in Tuesday’s newspaper, I came across some information I don’t remember ever seeing before – a short biography of Dr. Seuss.

Read across America Day was started as a celebration of both the love of reading and Dr. Seuss’s birthday on March 2.

According to the biography on www.seussville.com, Theodor “Ted” Seuss Geisel was born on March 2, 1904, in Springfield, Mass. He grew up, attended Dartmouth College and had no idea what to do with his life.

So, he did what many college grads do – he stalled.

He fed a line to his dad that he had been accepted to Oxford University on a fellowship program, probably thinking that would buy him some time to figure out what he really wanted to do.

But his doting dad couldn’t help but brag about his son. He went right down to the newspaper office and had them write a story about his son’s fellowship.

It sounds as if the reporter who wrote this up missed the day in Journalism school where they teach you to check your sources.

Anyway, Seuss was then forced to tell his dad the truth. It turns out his dad was not only proud, but prideful. In order to save face, Seuss’s father came up with enough money to send his son to Oxford anyway.

It was there that he met his first wife, who saw some of his doodles in his notebook and convinced him he didn’t want to be a professor, but an illustrator.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

And classic children’s literature.