In a career spanning several decades, the American humorist, writer, and publisher Bennett Cerf, well-known to millions of Americans in the 1950s and 60s for his numerous appearances on panel show What’s My Line; was also one of the co-founders of the worldwide publishing company Random House. During his many years with the company, Cerf worked with some of the 20th century’s most acclaimed authors, including the likes of William Faulkner, Sinclair Lewis, Eugene O’Neill, and Robert Graves.
But Cerf later admitted that he considered only one of the authors on his company’s books to be a true literary genius: Dr. Seuss.
Dr. Seuss — the pen name of children’s author and poet Theodor Seuss “Ted” Geisel, wrote and illustrated more than 60 books for children in a career spanning six decades, including such instantly familiar titles as If I Ran the Zoo (1950), Horton Hears a Who! (1955), The Cat in the Hat (1957), and How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1957). His unique sing-song writing style, crazy plotlines, and his equally bizarre and instantly recognizable drawing style all conspired to prove hugely popular with readers and their parents alike. Today Seuss is considered one of the most successful children’s authors of all time; his books have sold more than 600 million copies in more than 20 different languages worldwide.
But of all of his books and their madcap plotlines, at least one is matched by an equally bizarre story explaining how Dr. Seuss came to write it in the first place.
Dr. Seuss wrote one of his most famous titles, The Cat In The Hat, in response to a plea from schoolbook publisher at Houghton Mifflin to write a primer for early learners of English that was more exciting and more complex than traditional (and increasingly ineffective) primers like the Dick and Jane stories. A lucrative deal—in which Houghton Mifflin would publish an education edition to US schools, while Random House would produce a trade edition for sale in bookstores, was drawn up, and The Cat In The Hat arrived in schools and stores across the United States in 1957. It proved an almost immediate success, selling more than 12,000 copies every month in the early years of its release—and as a result, Random House was soon keen to try to repeat its success.
In discussing what Dr. Seuss’ next title could be, publisher Bennett Cerf happened to note that, as a children’s literary primer, The Cat In The Hat had a total vocabulary of just over 200 different words. This seemed a remarkable achievement and led to Cerf considering whether this figure could be improved upon. As a result, he offered Dr. Seuss a wager: Cerf bet that Dr. Seuss could not write a new children’s book limited to a total vocabulary of just 50 different words or less. Dr. Seuss happily accepted the wager; and, it’s fair to say, more than rose to the occasion.
The book that was the result of this curious wager was the children’s classic, Green Eggs and Ham, which was published by Random House in 1960. In its entirety, Green Eggs and Ham is written using nothing more than the 50 different words a, am, and, anywhere, are, be, boat, box, car, could, dark, do, eat, eggs, fox, goat, good, green, ham, here, house, I, if, in, let, like, may, me, mouse, not, on, or, rain, Sam, say, see, so, thank, that, the, them, there, they, train, tree, try, will, with, would and you. No other word appears in the entire text of the book.
Although Cerf had quite decisively lost his bet with Dr. Seuss, there was, at least, a silver lining for him though: Despite its limited vocabulary, Green Eggs and Ham proved even more successful than its predecessor and went on to sell more than eight million copies worldwide.