The Bippolo Seed and Other Lost Stories

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The Bippolo Seed and Other Lost Stories
The cover of the book featuring clockwise from top left: The Bippolo Seed, The Great Henry McBride, Tadd and Todd, The Strange Shirt Spot, Gustav the Goldfish, Steak for Supper, The Rabbit, The Bear and the Zinniga-Zanniga
AuthorDr. Seuss
GenreChildren's literature
PublisherRedbook (magazines)
Random House (book)
Publication date
June/August/November 1950 ("Gustav the Goldfish", "Tadd and Todd" and "Steak for Supper")
February/June/September/November 1951 ("The Rabbit, the Bear and the Zinniga-Zanniga", "The Bippolo Seed", "The Strange Shirt Spot" and "The Great Henry McBride")
September 27, 2011
Preceded byHooray for Diffendoofer Day! 
Followed byHorton and the Kwuggerbug and More Lost Stories 

The Bippolo Seed and Other Lost Stories is a collection of seven illustrated stories by children's author Dr. Seuss published by Random House on September 27, 2011. Though they were originally published in magazines in the early 1950s, they had never been published in book form and are quite rare, described by the publisher as "the literary equivalent of buried treasure".[1] The stories were discovered by Charles D. Cohen, a Massachusetts dentist and a Seuss scholar and biographer, who also wrote an introduction to the collection.

Plots[]

The seven stories included in the book are as follows:[1]

  • "The Bippolo Seed" (60th-anniversary edition): a young duck named McKluck finds a rare seed that can grant wishes, but when a big cat tells him to wish for more than he needs to get money, they end up losing the seed in the process.
  • "The Rabbit, the Bear, and the Zinniga-Zanniga": a rabbit escapes being eaten by convincing a bear that he has a rare but serious disorder: the lack of a single eyelash.
  • "Gustav, the Goldfish": a boy overfeeds a goldfish named Gustav, causing him to grow until he fills a cellar. It was later adapted by Helen Palmer as "A Fish out of Water."
  • "Tadd and Todd": two identical twins named Tadd and Todd don't like being the same, so they try to be different by enhancing their looks but fail every time.
  • "Steak for Supper": a boy brags to his mother and father about his steak dinner, causing a lot of strange beasts to follow him home, but it turns out to be nothing but stew.
  • "The Strange Shirt Spot": a boy gets dirt on himself, to his mother's dismay, so he tries to get it off but fails every time.
  • "The Great Henry McBride": a boy named Henry McBride dreams of having five jobs, all at once.

Publication[]

The collection was published by Random House on September 27, 2011.[2] The stories originally appeared in magazines in 1950 and 1951.[2] Dr. Seuss died in 1991, and the stories were later rediscovered by Charles D. Cohen, a Massachusetts dentist and Seuss scholar.[3] Cathy Goldsmith of Random House encountered the magazine stories in one of Cohen's eBay auctions, around 2001.[3] Random House published Cohen's book The Seuss, the Whole Seuss and Nothing But the Seuss: A Visual Biography of Theodor Seuss Geisel in 2003.[3] He also contributed an introduction to this collection.[3]

Analysis[]

Some elements of the stories in this collection appeared in later books. The story "Gustav the Goldfish" was the basis for the Beginner Book A Fish out of Water. The book was written by Seuss's first wife Helen Palmer Geisel, illustrated by P. D. Eastman, and published in 1961.[4] "Gustav the Goldfish" rhymes, unlike A Fish out of Water.[2] Seuss later reused the basic plot of "The Strange Shirt Spot" for 1958's The Cat in the Hat Comes Back.[4] In both stories, a character tries to remove a spot from various household items but only manages to transfer the spot to one object after another.[5]

The story "The Rabbit, the Bear, and the Zinniga-Zanniga" was recorded by Marvin Miller and released on the 1965 album Dr. Seuss presents..."Fox in Socks" and "Green Eggs & Ham" on RCA Records.

References[]

  1. ^ a b The Bippolo Seed and Other Stories, Random House, retrieved July 20, 2011
  2. ^ a b c "Random Uncovers 'New' Seuss Stories", Publishers Weekly, March 29, 2011, retrieved July 20, 2011
  3. ^ a b c d "Lost stories by Dr. Seuss to be published", CBC News, April 7, 2011, retrieved July 20, 2011
  4. ^ a b Nel 2007, p. 164
  5. ^ Nel 2007, p. 116

Sources[]

  • Nel, Philip (2007). The Annotated Cat: Under the Hats of Seuss And His Cats. New York: Random House. ISBN 978-0-375-83369-4.
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