Green Eggs and Ham Inside Cover

Green Eggs and Ham is one of the bestselling Dr. Seuss books of all time.
This book was born of a wager between Ted Geisel and his Random House publisher, Bennett Cerf. Cerf bet Geisel $50 that he couldn’t write a book using 50 words or less. Legend has it that Cerf never paid off the bet.

Like Norman Rockwell, Seuss personally created every rough sketch, preliminary drawing, final line drawing and finished work for each page of every project he illustrated.

Despite the technical and budgetary limitations of color printing during the early and mid-twentieth century, Dr. Seuss the artist was meticulous about color selection. He created specially numbered color charts and elaborate color call-outs to precisely accomplish his vision for each book. Saturated reds and blues, for example, were carefully chosen for The Cat in the Hat to attract and maintain the visual attention of a six-year-old audience.

By the time Seuss’s book career took off, sharp draftsman skills were evident in drawings. His ability to move a storyline ahead via illustrations filled with tension, movement and color became a hallmark component of his work, and the surreal images that unfolded over six decades became the catalyst for a humorous and inspired learning experience.