He was a man that was humble," Audrey Geisel said. "He never realized how special the book was. "And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street," published in 1937, was Geisel's first book. Geisel, born in 1904, grew up in Springfield, a city cleverly portrayed in the Mulberry Street story: A Mayor Fordis Parker look-alike is on the reviewing stand for the parade, and the police officers ride red motorcycles, the traditional color of the famed Indian Motocycles manufactured in Springfield.
The sound of words was important to Geisel, whose tale of a young boy's imagination that turns a horse and a wagon on Mulberry Street into an increasingly grand extravaganza was the first of his 44 children's books. "He identified with children who made up words, and they identified with him." He loved the sound" of his made-up words. "He was very, very sensitive to the rhythm of his words," sometimes even making them up: grinch, sneetches, thneeds, lorax, fiffer-feffer-feff and zizzer-zazzer-zuzz to name a few.Īsked where he came up with funny words, his widow, Audrey G. Maybe young Geisel had a friend who lived on Mulberry Street, or maybe he just liked the sound of "mulberry," McLain theorized about the choice of the street name for the book.
"The celebration of the child's imagination – and the lack of that creative spark in the father (in the Mulberry Street book) – was a very pointed critique of how adult society often tries to tame inventiveness," Michelson said. Geisel's upbringing and the community here sparked much of his own imagination. "We first experience the world through a specific locale, and most good writers can transform their own specific memories into a universal feeling that resonates with all readers because of a certain universal attachment to our surroundings." Where people come from – including the street, house and room where they first lived – is often at the core of who they become, says Northampton-based children's author Richard Michelson. "His childhood was very important – the impressions, the people he met, the things he saw," McLain said. Most of Geisel's books have a connection to Springfield because his childhood here was key in forming the images that appear in his books, according to McLain. McLain, director of the Lyman & Merrie Wood Museum of Springfield History. Geisel, author of "And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street," which marks its 75th anniversary this fall, lived on Fairfield Street in the Forest Park section of the City of Homes.īut it's likely he walked or rode the trolley past Mulberry Street on his way to Classical High School on State Street, says Guy A. Seuss never lived on Mulberry Street, but oh, to think of all the things he saw growing up here a century ago.
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