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Listen to find strength and community on the MG journey on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories. And what you just heard is an excerpt from Dr. Seuss's 1971 book, The Lorax.
In 1989, this book was banned for the first time in a California school because it was believed to portray logging in a poor light and would turn children against the forest industry. Dr. Seuss was raised as a Lutheran and had a strong religious background. His books often included strong moral messages, but he was always careful with how he went about it.
Here to share a bit about Dr. Seuss's The Lorax and The Grinch, by the way, is Brian J. Jones, author of Becoming Dr. Seuss. In 1949, after he's come out of the Signal Corps, he's still making a career in ads. He's dabbled in Hollywood screen fixing and screenwriting.
He doesn't like it. It's writing by committee. He's a little bit miserable, but he still really wants to do children's books. And he's just successful enough at it as a sort of second job that he's actually asked to lead a writer's workshop on writing children's books for the University of Utah in 1949. It is a pivotal moment in children's literature because Seuss sits down and writes down by hand what he thinks makes great writing for children. And he's taking lessons that he's learned from Capra. You can clearly see him processing and talking about you've got to make the words count. You have to keep the action moving forward.
You will lose children. He was telling students in his class, you know, your biggest competitor right now is comic books. And so it's Seuss really putting down on paper what children need to have their interests sustained and how you don't want to write down to them and how you don't want to be deliberately saccharine. You know, kids don't like being talked down to. Seuss inherently gets this.
If you're trying to impress a kid or you're trying to write fancy for some kid, they will see right through. He would tell these students in his class that a child is the toughest audience you will ever write for because they will see you coming. You cannot fool a kid.
So don't try. The Grinch was successful right away. But The Grinch, I think, is such a fascinating book because, you know, remember, part of the message behind The Grinch is that Christmas doesn't come from a store. And I love that this book was written by somebody who spent the first part of his career probably telling you that Christmas did come from a store. I mean, the guy was in advertising and was very good at it. So I think there's a little bit of Seuss reckoning with himself in this story, which is one of the reasons why I think it's one of the reasons he took it so personally. He could really sympathize with The Grinch and The Grinch coming around.
But it's a great example of Seuss really working on an ending because Seuss didn't like his books to be overtly preachy or messagey. He often said, you know, again, consistent with what he said in the 1949 lectures, if you're trying to be preachy again, kids are going to see you coming. They're going to recognize immediately what you're up to. They're going to fold up shop. They're going to walk away like no kid wants to be preached to.
So you can't you can't do that. So when he got to the end of The Grinch and was trying to figure out what happens after The Grinch has kind of redeemed himself, what do you end it with? He was trying to keep it from being a little too religious, if he could, which is why it ultimately ends with sort of the brotherhood of man, where you see, you know, the in the cartoon, they do it brilliantly when the star comes up.
But he's serving the roast beast at dinner. So it's more of a family type ending than a than a Christmassy ending, per se. But that was Seuss working really hard with an ending. Now, at one point in his career, he did write a intentionally deliberately message book, and that was The Lorax. And that's the one book where Seuss said, you know, I sat down to do this because I got mad. Seuss's house in La Jolla, California, sat up on Mount Soledad.
It's this beautiful hilltop house still there today. And at the time he built it, there was nothing around it, as you can imagine, in the 40s and early 50s. But over the years, he was watching development sort of encroach on his hillside and it was sort of cookie cutter houses and apartments.
And he didn't really, you know, he didn't really like the way they were tearing into the mountainside. So The Lorax was his intentional way of addressing the issue of being careful with our resources. Seuss never says in The Lorax, don't cut down trees. As Seuss pointed out for, you know, after The Lorax came out, he said, look, I write books. Books are printed on paper. I live in a house.
A house is made of wood. I'm not anti logging. I'm not anti cutting down trees.
I'm pro being responsible with what we have. And that's sort of the message of The Lorax, which a lot of times gets lost in the discussion of that. I think it's his most consistently banned book.
A lot of times it was banned in sort of the northwestern part of the United States where they rely on logging and timbering and things like that. But that's probably his most controversial book because of that. And Seuss always warned people, like, be very careful. You know, I've got a message in here, but make sure you understand what that message is. And it's got, I think, one of the most beautiful messages of any of Seuss's books where he says, unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not.
I mean, that has nothing to do with logging, with timbering, nothing. It is a universal message. It is the beautiful point of that book in there. That is Seuss getting as messaging as he's ever going to get. And I think when people get wrapped around the axle on whether Seuss is being, you know, too environmental in this and he's too woke and he's paying too much attention to the movement of the time.
You know, this was when Earth Day happened in the early 70s. The real message in there is unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. You know, take charge, get involved. That's the message of The Lorax more than anything else. But that's the one time Seuss deliberately set out to convey a message and look how carefully he does it. He really sweated that. And I mean, that book was tough for him anyway. But like really agonizing over message, because as he told everybody in the late 1940s, you know, if you were deliberately messaging, you are in big trouble.
You know, everyone will immediately see what you're doing. And so I just think that's so interesting with The Lorax is because people think they see what he's doing. You know, they immediately start saying he's being environmental. He's talking about logging. Well, he is.
But the bigger point is unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot. I mean, that's the real message of The Lorax more than anything else. And Seuss is almost hiding it in plain sight because he was being so careful about it. Two beautiful short stories about the Grinch and The Lorax here on Our American Stories. Lee Habib here, the host of Our American Stories. Every day on this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from across this great country.
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