Hooray for Diffendoofer Day!, in a way, saved my life, because I had just had prostate cancer surgery. I had just gotten out of the hospital and was in a lot of pain. I was also, frankly, feeling sorry for myself. Guys do that. They feel sorry for themselves. I didn’t have much energy, and then this project came along. Dr. Seuss’ widow had discovered fragments of a manuscript that he had begun. It didn’t have a title. It had a setting - a school. It had a few characters, some of whom I kept. It had a few verses, and it had a few drawings.
One of my publishers is Random House, which published all of Dr. Seuss’ books. They said, “What can you do with this?”
I said, “Well, I think I can do something.”
The Seuss estate agreed that I was the one to do it. I had to pass muster on this. I had to get it past his agent, his widow, and the lawyers. It was amazing.
Well, I worked on it for a few hours every day, and then I’d go back to bed; but I had this feeling that he was standing and looking over my shoulder and collaborating with me. It’s a little wacky, but, nonetheless, I had that feeling. I tried to write it in a style that was a combination of his style and mine, so that, first of all, you couldn’t tell which verses were his; because he had about six or seven verses, which I kept as much as I could. I kept just about all his verses, and I wove them into a story. There was a lot going on about testing in the schools at that time, and I thought, “Well, this is perfect.” That’s what the book is about, and it’s kind of an homage to teachers. It’s not kind of an homage; it is an homage to teachers. It’s all about teachers - teachers teaching us how to think.
