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A quarter of a billion people bought this cute children's book without knowing the suffering behind it

Today, 60 years ago, the world received a gift, when the book "Not Hungry and Not Like" made everyone excited. And now is the time to dwell, on the rather painful story, of the genius Doctor Horse, and the intervention that has raked him a fortune. And how does all this relate to the Cold War? You should read, we have a hypothesis

• Doctor Seuss
• Children's Books

Living Room Fellow

"Broadway's Most Creative Season," read on the cover of American Life magazine over a portrait of actress Kay Ballard, whose musical, "The Golden Apple," has just hit the world-famous theaters. The date was May 24, 1954, and despite the positive reviews, Kay Ballard's performance came off the stage after only 125 performances. Precisely the more "boring" headline than the cover of this particular magazine went down in history. Above Ballard's winking face appeared in white letters the words: "Why does my child not know how to read?". This rather heavy magazine article by the famous journalist John Hersy changed the world of children's books forever.

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The article, which was pushed to page 136 of the magazine (there were days) which cost 20 cents, sharply criticized the method of learning to read in the United States, which, according to Hersi, paved many of them for illiteracy. This was not only the social significance of delaying reading comprehension and expression. Anyway - just part of the basic paranoia in America of those days, which was in constant competition with the Soviet Union against the backdrop of the Cold War.The Americans imagined the little communist children learning to read at a young age, and systematically becoming loyal missile scientists and disciplined and sophisticated soldiers. According to the article, they wasted their time in front of the main enemy of reading - television. It

should be remembered that American television began broadcasting less than a decade before the article was published, but Hersi explains its destructive presence in American homes, and even calls it "the enemy." It was found that the average American child watches three hours of television a day. Reminder: This is 1954. In real time, Hersi knew how to explain that this was an exaggeration (because the survey was conducted by questioning the children themselves, who are prone to exaggeration), and in retrospect we also know American literacy in those days was for lower-class children who did not have a television set at home.

And in any case, the problem familiar to any parent from the current millennium of "Kids in Front of Screens" was still in its infancy in those days, and Hersi does not cite it as the main cause of America's children's reading problem. His accusing finger was pointed at the books themselves. Rather, Hershey explained that the problem lies in the "Beginning to Read" books, which are provided by the schools to tens of millions of American children each year, specifically from the "Dick and Jane" book series. Like the children of Israel, who for decades learned to read through the mythological book "Alfoni" by Zivia Wilensky, the one that opens with the immortal sentence: "Dana Nema, Nama Dana. Dana Kama, Kama Dana."

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Alfoni's method, like that of the Dick and Jane series of books, was based on word recognition (on Alfoni's first page, this method was called "analytical-synthetic"). Other experts from that period advocated the phonetic method - of learning letters and recognizing sounds. Unsurprisingly, this was also the method the Soviets learned in those days. Hersi does not pretend to argue which of the methods is better, but notes that if the choice is to teach in a method based on words, then the words must interest the reader. According to him, "Dick and Jane" books are so bad and boring, both in terms of program and illustrations that accompany them, that there is no chance that any child will want to be interested in them. Our "Dana Nema, Nema Dana" feels like a Shakespearean sonata compared to the lyrics in Dick and Jane's books. Here's one example, which appears next to a simplistic drawing of children (whites of course) playing on a paper plane:

"Look at the plane going up," Dick said. "Look. Look at the plane going up."

Jane said, "Oh, look at Sally. Look at the plane going upstairs."

"Up, up," Sally said. "He goes up, up."

As part of the long 16-page article, Hershey noted that bookstores are full of children's books full of imagination and interest, with rich illustrations and interesting characters that make the young reader fall in love with them (among other things, he positively notes Jean de Bronhoff's The King at the Bar). . At the same time, in the classrooms the children encounter "Dick and Jane", who are unreliable characters who do not behave like real children. Dick and Jane are always clean, always polite, never rude. Kids want to read about dirty and mischievous characters. Children recognize that they are being soaped, in every sense.

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Hershey attacked not only the silly plots, but also the illustrations that accompanied Dick and Jane's books: "Why not add text to the textbooks that will enrich the written word instead of narrowing it down? Why not use the creativity of geniuses like Howard Pyle (who illustrated Robin's books) Hood - A.S.), John Tenniel (who illustrated the books "Alice in Wonderland" - A.S.), Doctor Horse or Walt Disney? ".

Mentioning the names was utterly humorous of course. Pyle and Tenniel died decades before the article was published, Walt Disney has already won 16 Oscars and probably did not consider turning a profession into a children's book illustrator. Theodore Sos Geisel, or as he is known by his pen name, "Doctor Horse", has already published 14 successful children's books, and two films written by him have won Oscars, mostly with sophisticated writing with wonderful language refinements that weave deep messages for older readers as well. No one really expected him to volunteer to re-illustrate the "Dick and Jane" books, and he did not intend to do so.

William Spolding thought otherwise. The pedagogical director of Houghton Mifflin, then a company that was mainly engaged in publishing textbooks, turned to Dr. Horse and asked him to read Hersi's article. He invited Geisel to a meal in Boston, where he presented himself with a challenge: "To write a book that six- and seven-year-olds could not lay their hands on." Geisel agreed to the challenge, without understanding exactly why he was entering. In order to write books that could receive the "First Reading" standard for first graders, he had to use a happy list of 348 words taught in US schools in those days. Spolding gave Geisel the list of words allowed, he explained that he was not allowed to write in the book though. A word that is not on the list, and even added a request of his own: to limit the book to only 250 words from the list.Geizel took the list with him back to California, and promised to do as much as he could.

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On the long flight back home Geisel looked at the list, and realized that it was an impossible task. He had an idea to write a children's story about climbing the summit of Mount Everest at minus sixty degrees, but the list given to him did not have the words "climb", "summit", "Everest", "minus" or "degrees". He decided it was a ridiculous task, and decided to abandon it.

Two years later, Geisel managed to publish two more successful "Doctor Horse" books before Suffelling reminded him again of the challenge he faced. Geisel locked himself in his study in the La Hoya neighborhood of San Diego, and for three weeks tried to find a character with an rhyming name he could create from the words on the list. At first he flirted with an idea for a main character called "Tall Ball" but could not find any interest in the subject. He later thought of a royal couple named "The King Cat and the Queen Cat" but even though the word "King" was on the list, the word "Queen" was not there. In an article he wrote in those days, he revealed that he was surprised to find out that his 6-year-old niece did not know the word "Kevin" at all, which shocked him. In practice, he invented the niece and simply joked, or alternatively demonstrated a decent degree of feminism to the 1950s.

He continued to search for worthy rhymes within the pedagogical list until the token fell - cat and hat - and thus was born The Cat In The Hat, or in its Hebrew name: "Prank Cat". The book, which did not deviate from the U.S. Department of Education's approved list, ended up using only 236 net words. It became a hysterical bestseller, and Doctor Horse's most successful book to date.

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"Prank Cat" changed the rules of the game. Teachers loved the educational message of the book, parents enjoyed the fact that their children read enthusiastically and most importantly - the children wanted to read it over and over again. "He made me a lot of money," Geisel himself said, "but the greatest pleasure is that I flew the 'Dick and Jane' books from most of the libraries of schools across America." The publishing house "Random House" decided to invest in the new genre that was born with "Prank Cat" and opened the "Books for Beginners" series. Naturally, Geisel became the editor-in-chief of the series.

Geisel continued to invest in his children-books-that-even-adults-can-love (his next book, "The Grinz", will sharply criticize the phenomenon of Christmas commercialization) and at the same time continued to produce books for the "Beginner's Books" series under strict adherence to pedagogical instructions. One of them was the sequel "Repeat Prank Cat", which along with making sure to use the right words managed to convey a message about trying to solve a problem by creating another problem. It is not clear if he meant this, but to this day economists use this book, written for 6-year-olds, to explain in a simple way the problematic nature of debt arrangements ("haircuts") with tycoons.

Dr. Suss reached another climax with "Strange Things Happen in Books" (originally: "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish"), which reduced the list of allowed words to less than 200, without sacrificing conceptual richness and ingenious illustrations. The book was the first in a horse's new sub-series: "Beginner's Books," which was intended for children even before school age. The allowed sub-series had a total of 182 words.

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In 1959, Bennett Kref, the editor-in-chief of Random House, approached Giselle and offered him a friendly intervention: write a book for the new, limited series, using only 50 words this time. If he succeeds, Crepe will pay him $ 50 (a little less than $ 500 in today's money). Geisel again took on the challenge, and immediately regretted it. How can you write a book with only 50 words?

The result will be mental and professional torture, expressed in the words of a simple book that any two-year-old can enjoy. Suddenly the hard work on "Prank Cat" felt like a child's play. Geisel locked himself in his study for weeks and months, filling the room with word lists, marking the words he had already used, marking words he had decided to give up, and to add insult to injury, he decided to limit the book to one syllable words. He also succeeded (except for the word Anywhere, generations of scholars are still trying to figure out why he deviated from his own rule specifically for her).

"The hardest part was the rhyme," she told his couple of biographers, "I was miserable. It was ant work. I found myself throwing in the trash quite a few successful lines simply because I could not complete the line without exceeding the word list." After nearly a year of work, Geisel completed the writing of the book. He did not like him, and just wanted to get rid of him already. It was the first book by Doctor Who he was not sure about. Ironically, it will become his most successful book, and one of the best-selling books in history.

It was called "Green Eggs And Ham", and it hit stores on August 12, 1960, exactly 60 years ago today. It is estimated that between 200 and 250 million copies of the book were sold - in its English version alone. It is the simplest and most complicated children's book to read ever published. It is also the fourth best-selling hardcover children's book in U.S. history (yes, more than the Harry Potter books, although they sold much more in paperback editions).

In Hebrew, to avoid writing a book on pork, translator Leah Naor decided to give up altogether. The name of the dish, and thus the local version was born "not hungry, and not like." The story consists of two characters: Sam and Guy (Guy's name is not revealed in the book, but only in the TV series, while in the Hebrew version Sam becomes "sit"). To make Guy the grumpy pessimist taste a dish of green eggs and pork, but repeatedly stubbornly refuses, as he does not like the dish (in Hebrew, as mentioned, the fact that Guy is not hungry at all). After several troublesome and unsuccessful attempts, Guy agrees to taste The story ends reluctantly and reveals that he actually loves it. The story ends when Guy thanks Sam. The moral of the children is simple: do not be picky about food. Adults have a different message between the lines, which calls for being open to change, new worlds, diverse tastes and remembering the important value of friendship. Probably in difficult

moments.Although it uses only 50 words, it is a brilliant poetic-masterpiece of the author's struggle with insanity His van tackles his mission, which seemed to him as fictional as "green eggs," and also as disgusting as it is. While the creator himself is not within the work itself as Bulgakov's "The Artist and Margarita," his frustration can be felt from the barrier of writing and the painful confrontation with the text as in Stephen King's "Misery." It's a cute children's book about someone eating a green breakfast, and yet you can hear the suffering of the creator from the ranks.

The book he hated to write became his most successful book. It has become a cartoon, a series on Netflix, a museum exhibit, an amusement park facility and a giant balloon at the annual Thanksgiving parade on New York Sixth Avenue. Presidents read about it in the White House, judges quoted it in judgments, rappers used it to beat beats in rhymes that no one had ever written like them. Geisel, for his part, continued to argue until the day he died that the only reason he forced himself to finish the book was the $ 50 bet he made with Bennett Crepe. By the way, Crepe never paid him the money, and Geisel had to make do with the tens of millions of dollars he made from book sales around the world.

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In an interview with Oren Barzilai in Time Out magazine from 2016, translator Leah Naor explained that she had to "give up something" in order to face the challenge of translating the words of the dear doctor into Hebrew. "I did not have to do the vocabulary calculation because the guideline was simple: there is no rhetoric," Naor explained, "if there is a possibility of simple translation I will simply translate, it is the choice at every opportunity, both in my writing and in translation."

On its official website, Naor expanded on the difficult challenge of translating an unfamiliar dish for Israeli children like pork. "I solved the problem narrowly by not mentioning at all the name of the dish that the book's hero vehemently rejects," Naor writes, "I did not want to invent another dish, and instead used a term an Israeli child would say when he did not want to eat something: 'I do not want it.'

By the way, although she tried to limit herself to 50 words as in the original, in Hebrew Naor had to use 88 words, which is still a fantastic achievement for a translation that also manages to maintain the original educational message, and also remains true to its unique weight and rhyme. And these are the words: love, locomotive, delicious, in the rain, he, sit, I, not, in the air, fox, hey, my name, maybe, you, blue, and pretty, stubborn, hungry, want, you, it, here, or, there , Nowhere, from here, inside, boat, in the world, leave, me, at home, on, taste, allowed, suddenly, table, also, mouse, tree, even, small, ready, hot, cold, it, I, think , Eat, in a box, fire, tired, goat, like, in a hammock, in the dark, pleasant, at all, confused, in the car, such, exploding, traveling, race, of, already, I found, great, in the caravan, peppery, see, when wet, in the rain , Dry, old, you, awful, can, tasted, to, to-day, will, what, look, well, thank you.

And there is no better word to end this article than the last word. Thank you Doctor, thank you.