When I finished this book, I can honestly say that I didn’t know how I felt about it. I thought that Brian Jay Jones did a phenomenal job writing this and I’m excited to read his other works. However, it was the information he produced in this book that left me shocked.
In four-hundred and thirty pages, Jones takes us from the beginning of Ted Geisel’s, a.k.a. Dr. Suess, life to the very end and I have to say that I’m not the biggest fan of Suess’ anymore. As a writer, he was a genius, I can’t deny that. As a decent human being, not so much. More specifically, how he handled the death of his first wife, Helen. She sadly committed suicide and many are led to believe it was because she knew that Geisel had fallen in love with another woman, which he had. While that is heartbreaking, what’s even worse in my eyes, was the fact that Geisel and the “other woman”, Audrey, got married about eight months after Helen’s death. This book didn’t state that Ted or Audrey had a blown-out affair, but make it quite clear that they each had feelings for one another. The fact that Ted kept getting Audrey and her husband to do “couple” things with him and Helen just puts a really bad taste in my mouth.
Being the Christmas enthusiast that I am, you know I couldn’t NOT talk about “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.” I had no idea that it came out the same year as “The Cat in the Hat,” let alone becoming the two books that made “Dr. Suess” a household name. He obviously had written a dozen or so books before these were released but these two books allowed him to live on a writer’s salary alone. For Grinch in particular, Jones mentions that Suess wrote it because he was so annoyed at the consumerism he witnessed during the Christmas season. In fact, he was rooting for the Grinch. At one point, Suess admitted that he didn’t want the Grinch to give the gifts back as he felt that the ending had a much more steady ending. Crazy, right? However, it was in reading how they put together the animated movie that really got me excited. Did anyone else know that Geisel wrote the lyrics for “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch?” I had NO idea! Geisel was heavily involved in the entire production as well, which I loved reading about. He wanted to make sure that his story was represented in the right way, so everything you see on screen has a very authentic “Suess” feel to it. Reading that definitely makes me look at the cartoon in a new way — and I love it!
One of the things I loved about this book was just reading about another author’s struggles. Hearing about how Geisel thought children’s books should be written, this book offers a lot of helpful and useful advice for aspiring writers/authors. You read about his dedication to the work and the process. He had a routine down every day, even though he worked from home. He would get up every day, go to his office and sit there for eight hours trying to put together stories. I think that’s a great message for anyone to read. His success didn’t come overnight. Suess had to write a dozen or so books before he was popular enough to not have to rely on outside jobs, such as advertising gigs, for a paycheck.
Overall, Brian Jay Jones did a great job with this. He was articulate and never made excuses for Geisel’s faults or misguided attitudes toward certain things. He acknowledged that Giesel was a man who made mistakes but more importantly, Jones gave the reader an inside and unbiased opinion of who Dr. Suess really was. I’m really glad I read this and I would happily recommend it to others who want to know about the life of Dr. Suess — with a warning that he may not live up to the picture in your head.
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