Theodor Geisel Influence On Children's Advertising

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Picture it, the year is 1940 and Great Britain is in a losing battle with Germany and in desperate need of aid from the United States. World War 2 has been trudging on for two years now and Britain is out of money and supplies. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and United States President Franklin Roosevelt converse over how to take down the Nazis without the United States being drug into the war. On March 11, 1941 Congress passed the Lend and Lease Act. This act allowed the United States to loan military supplies to any nation deemed “Vital to the Defense of the United States” (“Lend-Lease Act 1941”). Many Americans supported President Roosevelt in his decision to lend military supplies to Britain, however, one man, named Theodor Geisel, had a much different opinion on Mr. Roosevelt’s policy. Mr. Geisel believed that the United States would eventually end up in the fighting and should save its military supplies for itself. He was an advertising cartoonist at the time; therefore, he took the skills that had formerly been used to advertise Flit insecticide to make political cartoons. Later in life Mr. Geisel would try his hand at writing children’s books. Writing children’s literature is what probably made him most famous and where he acquired his pen name Dr. Seuss. Theodor Geisel changed the advertising world as well as children’s literature by using short, catchy phrases and abstract cartoons to draw …show more content…
He was the son of Theodor Geisel and Henrietta Seuss. Henrietta worked in her father’s bakery before becoming Mrs. Geisel in 1901. Much of Geisel’s inspiration for the rhythms in which he wrote and the urgency that he did it in would come from his mother. At bedtime, she would put Theodore, [Ted to his family], to sleep by chanting to him the way in which she sold the pies, “Apple, mince, lemon...peach, apricot, pineapple...blueberry, coconut, custard, and SQUASH!” (Nel