Seussville, would probably have delighted Dr. Seuss, who who really wasn't a doctor, but an advertising man who had already parlied his sense of humor into a decent career when he wrote his first children's book. Born of German immigrant parents, Theodore Seuss Gisell—the name he was to make famous was his mother's maiden name and his middle name—attended Dartmouth and then Oxford, where he distinguished himself primarily in doodling and humor. His first book, And To Think that I Saw It on Mulberry Street, only achieved publication because he was well-connected, but, published, rocketed to the top lists of librarians and children. However, it was the much later, much simpler, Cat in the Hat, that sealed his fate as the creator of the first reader for millions of American children. This year sees the first Geisel Award, administered by the ALA, that recognizes those that follow in the footsteps of the man who, both a writer and an illustrator, spoke to children with his wonderful sense of color, line, rhyme, and whimsy.