and to think that i saw it on mulberry street

The book's positive sales encouraged Geisel to create his own children's book, which his advertising contract did not forbid. Geisel's popular campaign featured the line 'Quick, Henry, the Flit!' He had also made some forays into book publishing: for Viking Press in 1931 he illustrated Boners and More Boners, collections of quotations from children's school papers. He had an established and prosperous career in advertising, including a contract with Standard Oil for Flit bug spray. Geisel was 33 and had ten years of experience in cartooning, illustrating and advertising when he began work on Mulberry Street. but a plain horse and wagon on Mulberry Street'. However, when his father questions him about what he saw on his way home, his face turns red and he says, 'Nothing . Now almost home, he snaps back to reality and rushes up the front steps, eager to tell his father his imagined story. The scene becomes a parade, as he then imagines a grandstand filled with the mayor and aldermen an airplane dropping confetti and, in the final incarnation of the scene, a Chinese man, a magician pulling rabbits out of a hat, and a man with a ten-foot beard. Marco's realization that Mulberry Street intersects with Bliss Street leads him to imagine a group of police escorts. The wagon changes to a chariot, then a sled, then a cart holding a brass band. He imagines the horse is first a zebra, then a reindeer, then an elephant, and finally, an elephant helped by two giraffes. To make his story more interesting, Marco imagines a progressively more elaborate scene. However, the only thing Marco has seen on his walk is a horse pulling a wagon on Mulberry Street. The rhythm of the ship's engines captivated him and inspired the book's signature lines: Geisel conceived the core of the book aboard a ship in 1936, returning from a European vacation with his wife.

However, when he arrives home, he decides instead to tell his father what he actually saw-a simple horse and wagon.

First published by Vanguard Press in 1937, the story follows a boy named Marco, who describes a parade of imaginary people and vehicles traveling along a road, Mulberry Street, in an elaborate fantasy story he dreams up to tell his father at the end of his walk. Seuss book And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry StreetĪnd to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street is Theodor Seuss Geisel's first children's book published under the pen name Dr.

And to think that i saw it on mulberry street