These days, I don’t talk much about my first book. I wrote it when I was 7 years old, in collaboration with Dr. Seuss and Roy McKie. As you can see, I improved upon their artwork with the aid of stickers from the United Fruit Company (of whose bananas I was then an avid consumer)…
Tag: Life
Commonplace Book
People once kept commonplace books — personal, portable anthologies of favorite quotations. Today, the “Favorite Quotations” section on Facebook offers a brief, public version of the commonplace book. This practice has, I think, mostly faded. At any rate, here are ten quotations that would be in my commonplace book. But, luckily, he kept his wits and…
Green Eggs and Ham: A 50-Word Book Turns 50
Dr. Seuss‘s Green Eggs and Ham is one of the reasons I do this blog, write books, and am an English professor. Nearly forty years ago, Green Eggs and Ham — which turns 50 this month — taught me to read. It also taught me that reading is fun, helping to make me a life-long reader. The…
Mash-up vs. Purple Crayon
Different kinds of scholars, different kinds of scholarship. But many paths to success in academia.
Cockney Alphabet
A for horses? B for mutton? C for yourself — it’s the Cockney Alphabet!
Fortunate Failures; or, How I Became a Scholar of Dr. Seuss
How a failed book proposal launched a career. Mine. Viva failure!