Dr. Seuss

Theodor Geisel drew advertising cartoons for an insecticide company for fifteen years before children's books, then wrote One Fish, Two Fish and The Cat in the Hat against restricted vocabulary lists meant to repair American reading instruction. A publisher bet him he could not manage a book in fifty words, and Green Eggs and Ham settled it. During the war he drew political cartoons attacking isolationism and prejudice against Jews, and in the same pages drew Japanese-Americans as a fifth column, work he never fully answered for, though he meant Horton Hears a Who as a kind of apology to Japan. In 2021 his estate withdrew six titles from publication over racist caricature. He had no children, and dealt with questions about it by saying you have them, I entertain them.