How Author Dr. Seuss Created the Classic 1960 Children’s Book ‘Green Eggs and Ham’

In a recent episode of the web series Fig. 1, Lynda Claassen, director of Special Collections & Archives at the University of California, San Diego, presents pieces from the Dr. Seuss collection at the university’s Geisel Library and shows the process author and illustrator Theodore Geisel—better known as Dr. Seuss—went through to create his classic children’s book Green Eggs and Ham. Claassen shows the page layouts Geisel made, complete with hand-written instructions to the printer for color, and excerpts from what Geisel called his “bone pile,” sheets of paper on which he worked out rhymes and phrasing.

The book was written after Random House co-founder Bennett Cerf famously bet Geisel that he could not write a book using only 50 words. Geisel won the bet when he completed the book, and it was published in 1960.

via Books of Wonder