We’ve had many posts on Theodor Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, but can you ever know too much about the man who taught you to read? Flavowire has a collection of trivia that includes some things that you’ve either never heard before or may have forgotten. You knew he had no children, right? But he had an imagination like no one else.
While there were no children in the Seuss clan, he did make up imaginary little ones to brag about when his friends boasted about theirs. “Chrysanthemum Pearl” was probably the “daughter” he discussed the most. She was precocious imaginary child, capable of making “the most delicious oyster stew with chocolate frosting and flaming Roman candles.” Other mythical kids included Norval, Wally, Wickersham, and Thnud. Geisel even signed their names on the family holiday cards.
Geisel found it tiresome and difficult to answer the question: “Where do your ideas come from?” He responded in a very Seussian way: “I get all my ideas in Switzerland near the Forka Pass. There is a little town called Gletch, and two thousand feet up above Gletch there is a smaller hamlet called Über Gletch. I go there on the fourth of August every summer to get my cuckoo clock fixed. While the cuckoo is in the hospital, I wander around and talk to the people in the streets. They are very strange people, and I get my ideas from them.”