He would have turned 107 today and his birthday is being recognized in the White House. You know his work because it is translated into many languages on earth, but it is his images that are universal.

His characters, as rousers of rabble, were invented to deal with weighty existential questions humans should ask, such as:

Do we matter in the universe?

Is there common sense in nuclear profileration?

Is it possible for liberty to dwell in the absence of civil rights?

But Theodor Seuss Geisel, "Ted" to his friends, is not thought of, primarily, as an agitator.

The real sage person behind the pen name did indeed wrestle with the big issues of his day.  You could even call him a green-minded, progressive Lefty and get away with it.  Much of this is revealed in Philip Nel's excellent book, Dr. Seuss: American Icon published by Continuum Books.  Part of the delightful mischief came through bright and clear in The Lorax: Original Illustrations by Dr. Seuss that attracted huge crowds in 2009 at the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson Hole.

Geisel had the uncanny wisdom to refrain from presenting conundrums as polemics and he dispensed his opinions artfully in the form of literature packaged for children yet intended for full brain absorption by their moms and dads.  (Nel mentions that in a delightful essay that you can read here titled Seussism.)

The little trick of speaking to two different audiences at once is what made Geisel a true genius.

Indeed he knew that children come into the world with a basic sense of right and wrong, and that there’s no greater sin than, for a parent delivering a bedtime story, to peddle greed as a rationale for injustice when youngsters know the real truth.
   
None of Geisel’s books, which collectively since 1991 have sold more than 300 million copies worldwide, holds more modern pertinence than The Lorax. 

He was inspired to write and illustrate this environmental classic at the dawn of the 1970s. The catalyst, it is said, was the rapid felling and disappearance of ancient redwood and sequoia groves in northern California, the state where Geisel lived though down in La Jolla, near San Diego, where he also openly fought billboard blight along the highways. 

The months leading up to publishing of The Lorax were important in the public’s ecological awakening.

In 1969, the Cuyahoga River in America caught fire from combustible pollution in its waters; the first Earth Day was staged in 1970, the same year the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was created and in that same year Joni Mitchell crooned Big Yellow Taxi (you know, the song with the refrain “paved paradise, put up a parking lot").

The Lorax was then, and remains, a coming of age fable for younger countries and a stern reminder for older ones.  Difficult as it is to imagine, but when it was published, the ilk that like to ban and burn books in American logging communities wanted The Lorax pulled from the shelves of public school libraries. 

Just as some have moved to ban Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, and treasonous American Thomas Paine (banned in England) for his book The Rights of Man, Seuss ‘s condemnation of the Once-ler made the list—reportedly to the delight of the author.

Thanks to an arrangement with the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Museum and Library, which serves as the repository, Geisel’s original art that evolved into his final Lorax illustrations that can be viewed at the National Museum of Wildlife Art.  The exhibit runs through September.  The impact of Seuss is eternal.

Enjoy a few images from the exhibition at Wildlife Art Journal while reading the essay, Seussism from one of the leading authorities in the world on children’s literature, Philip Nel, an English professor at Kansas State University.  Also visit Nel's website .

Now, go out and read The Lorax.

The story, for the rare individual who is unfamiliar with it, explains why the innocent beauty-loving title character went away after watching all of the Truffula trees around him hacked down in order to make more products which Geisel called “Thneeds.”

In the hasty race to meet demand for Thneeds and unsustainable consumption, the idyllic home of the Lorax is destroyed, all resemblances to its former Eden gone.  
And then, fittingly, those who logged the Truffulas and polluted the waters move on down the road in search of another conquest.

Whether nature, the budget of a government, or personal family finance, ecological and economic systems cannot persist when principle is exhausted, leaving no resources to generate interest on the capital, let alone wealth or prosperity.

Everywhere in the world the Once-lers and the Loraxes go by different names doing battle over the perceived market for Thneeds. 

Some of the Loraxes live on two legs, many on four, by wing and fin.
 
What is the equivalent of the Truffula in your community and who speaks for it?

Theodor Geisel, almost 20 years after his death, still does, as do the parents and grandparents who grasp the tale’s meaning, and, by extension, the National Museum of Wildlife Art for sponsoring exhibits that force viewers to think.
 
Using one’s brain is a curse to the Once-ler.

(For more information, visit Seussville).