Review by Choice Review
Oxford's "Lives and Legacies" series includes titles on Mark Twain, Winston Churchill, and William Faulkner, among others. Now Pease (Dartmouth College)--who has held an endowed chair named for Geisel and his first wife, Helen--adds Geisel, i.e., Dr. Seuss, to that list. Geisel (1904-91) sold more books for children than any other American writer. Writing as Dr. Seuss, he published his first book for children, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, in 1937 and his last, Oh, the Places You'll Go! in 1990. Geisel also wrote advertisements, produced anti-Hitler cartoons during WW II, and made films. His concern in much of his work was social justice. Pease reviews the modest corpus of scholarship on Geisel in his preface and then states his objective, which is to engage "the question of the relationship between Dr. Seuss's art and Geisel's life"--an approach no other scholar has taken. He accomplishes his goal handily, offering a compelling treatment that is accessible to any reader. Among the book's valuable contributions: discussion of Geisel's relationship with Dartmouth, his alma mater, where he had an appointment. Among the book's pleasures: numerous illustrations and explanations of their significance. Scholars will regret the lack of bibliography. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Undergraduates, general readers. E. R. Baer Gustavus Adolphus College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Pease terms this entry in the Lives and Legacies series a modest effort to explore the relationship between Dr. Seuss' art and Geisel's life. Despite its slim size, the biography offers a succinct, thoroughly researched, and engaging introduction to one of children's literature's most influential creators. Illustrated with photos and nicely reproduced artwork, the chapters begin with a nuanced look at Geisel's boyhood, citing real-life objects and events that influenced his later works. Well-chosen anecdotes deliver a sense of Geisel's sly humor: as his career was taking off, he planted a rumor that Dr. Seuss was an armless man who drew with his toes. Pease also addresses personal tragedies head-on: Geisel's first wife's suicide note is printed in full. Irreverent quotes from children's literature commentators add context and liveliness, such as poet Karla Kuskin's remark that Geisel's creatures had a smile that you might find on a Mona Lisa after her first martini. The result is a smoothly integrated portrait that humanizes an American icon and will appeal to casual readers and researchers alike.--Engberg, Gillian Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
A celebrated academic and authority on Geisel's work, Pease presents a comprehensive look into the life of the artist and author best known as Dr. Seuss. Born into a prominent German family and raised in Springfield, Mass., young Geisel demonstrated his linguistic creativity early on, mixing German and English to create nonsense names for toys and imaginary animals; he also drew cartoons on the walls in every room of his childhood home, improbably encouraged by his mother. As a student at Dartmouth, Geisel had limited enthusiasm for his studies, but fell in love with the Jack-O-Lantern, the college newspaper he wrote for and edited. It was at the Jack-O-Lantern Geisel would develop the whimsical Dr. Seuss persona that would define his profession and, to a great extent, his life. On a tour of Geisel's prolific career (he was, among other roles, an advertiser and political cartoonist), Pease analyzes the appeal and impact of Geisel's game-changing children's books (The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, Green Eggs and Ham, The Cat in the Hat, etc.) clearly and succinctly; the intricacies of Geisel's tumultuous personal life provide a sobering counterpart. B&W photos. (Apr.) Copyright 2010 Reed Business Information.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A slim biography puts the good Doctor and his oeuvre on the couch for some gentle analysis. In the preface, Pease (English, Comparative Literature, African-American Literature/Dartmouth Univ.) gives a brief overview of existing Seuss scholarship and locates his work within it as "a modest effort to explore" the "relationship between Dr. Seuss's art and Geisel's life." The authorwho was awarded the Ted and Helen Geisel Chair in the Humanities at Dartmouth, Geisel's alma materproceeds in largely chronological fashion. He sketches Geisel's childhood in Springfield, Mass., the child of two prominent German-immigrant families and scion of the Geisel brewery dynasty. The double whammy of World War I and Prohibition was a trauma, writes Pease, that Geisel spent the first part of his career working to exorcise. His anti-authoritarian streak was cultivated as editor of the Jack-O-Lantern, Dartmouth's humor magazine, from which he was fired for drunken shenanigans. Pease consistently refers to his subject as "Ted," "Geisel" or "Dr. Seuss" depending on the context, a device that works well in advancing his thesis: "Dr. Seuss was no longer reconstructing Ted's boyhood experience; in [The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins and The King's Stilts] he was teaching moral lessons. Geisel's democratic impulses and his liberal humanitarianism are evident in both works." Drawing on Geisel's writings and speeches as well as secondary sources both contemporary and retrospective, Pease drives his narrative forward, occasionally indulging in lit-crit gobbledygook (If I Ran the Zoo and If I Ran the Circus "both introduce a hypothetical frame that suspends the provenance of the adult's insistence on empirically verifiable reality"). For the most part, though, he argues his points cleanly, and his readings of his subject's books will engage readers. In his sparkling exegesis of The Cat in the Hat, the author interprets the Cat "as the activity of reading personified." A solid addition to the literature about one of the 20th century's most influential American writers. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
