“A rich, anecdotal biography.... Whether readers are familiar with Dr. Seuss books or not, they will find this biography absorbing and fascinating.” (Kirkus)

“Finally! The solution to the mystery of where Dr. Seuss earned his Ph.D. Brian Jay Jones also reveals the true identity of Chrysanthemum Pearl; the etymology of the word 'nerd'; the political leanings of Horton and Yertle; and the relationship of Krazy Kat to the one in the hat. It comes as no surprise that Theodore Geisel was a born story-teller; prying truth from fact, Jones pins our favorite fabulist nimbly, colorfully, and splendidly to the page.” (Stacy Schiff, author of The Witches)

“Readers of Becoming Dr. Seuss may be astonished to learn in this rollicking ride of a biography that Theodor Seuss Geisel - progenitor of the most anarchic animals of all time - was himself a radically bizarre creation, every bit as strange and emotionally uncoordinated as a Snoo or a Sneetch. Childless, chain-smoking, and cocktail-swilling, bawdy and argumentative, Geisel got his unlikely start promoting Standard Oil’s fly-killing insecticide (his ad campaign featured the immortal tag line 'Quick, Henry! The Flit!'); drawing coarse political cartoons (sometimes racist or misogynist); and serving as a World War II understudy to Frank Capra, making films teaching grunts to evade death and mosquitoes. His epic transformation into one of the most beloved and bestselling children’s writers of all time, winner of Oscars and a Pulitzer, is a poignant, affecting tale of a man who mastered the art of concision through imagination and sheer toil yet could never bring such exactitude to his own life, callously replacing his wife and editor of forty years, a suicide, with her rival. In Jones’s telling, the Seussian legacy emerges triumphant, elevating the power of children’s literature. 'I no longer write for children,' Geisel said proudly, at the end of his life. 'I write for people.'" (Caroline Fraser, author of Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder)