In the pantheon of children’s books, one creator stands above the rest: Dr. Seuss. If you thought you’d seen everything Dr. Seuss had published, then you might be surprised to find out that some of his “lost” works have been found, bound, and soon passed around. National Public Radio produced a feature segment focusing on the latest Dr. Seuss book, a collection of seven stories that originally ran in magazines during the 1950’s, called The Bippolo Tree, after one of the stories contained in the book.
Below, you can listen to the NPR piece in its entirety. Among those you’ll hear interviewed are Kate Klimo, Vice President, Publisher Random House/Golden Books Young Readers Group, Dr. Charles D. Cohen, Seuss scholar and collector, and Philip Nel, Children’s Literature Professor at Kansas State University.
It’s an interesting discussion about Seuss, lost works, and what you might find within the books. Among the most interesting points is that the works collected in this book are early Seuss stories originally published before he was a big name in children’s literature. Or, as Philip Nel says, “It’s like finding a bunch of lost one-act plays by Shakespeare; they may be minor works, but they’re the minor works of a genius.”
Have a listen…
About the Book
It’s the literary equivalent of buried treasure! Seuss scholar/collector Charles D. Cohen has hunted down seven rarely seen stories by Dr. Seuss. Originally published in magazines between 1950 and 1951, they include “The Bear, the Rabbit, and the Zinniga-Zanniga ” (about a rabbit who is saved from a bear with a single eyelash!); “Gustav the Goldfish” (an early, rhymed version of the Beginner Book A Fish Out of Water); “Tadd and Todd” (a tale passed down via photocopy to generations of twins); “Steak for Supper” (about fantastic creatures who follow a boy home in anticipation of a steak dinner); “The Bippolo Seed” (in which a scheming feline leads an innocent duck to make a bad decision); “The Strange Shirt Spot” (the inspiration for the bathtub-ring scene in The Cat in the Hat Comes Back); and “The Great Henry McBride” (about a boy whose far-flung career fantasies are only bested by those of the real Dr. Seuss himself).
In an introduction to the collection, Cohen explains the significance these seven stories have, not only as lost treasures, but as transitional stories in Dr. Seuss’s career. With a color palette that has been enhanced beyond the limitations of the original magazines in which they appeared, this is a collection of stories that no Seuss fan (whether scholar or second-grader) will want to miss!
