A new Dr. Seuss book discovered decades after his death | The Excerpt

[00:00:00]Sing my duckling's [music] song.

[00:00:03]>> Sing [singing] the 50 >> [music] >> United States.

[00:00:07]>> The song you just heard isn't just any song about the US, but rather one that was recently commissioned to mark the posthumous publication of Sing the 50 United States, a completed unpublished Dr. Seuss manuscript that was hiding in plain sight for decades and discovered just in time to help mark the country's 250th anniversary. The completed draft was discovered last year inside the Dr. Seuss archives at UC San Diego among thousands of files connected to the late Theodore Geisel's artwork and writing.

[00:00:37]So, why is this book only seeing the light of day now? Hello and welcome to USA Today's The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. USA Today Books Reporter Claire Mulroy joins me now to talk about how this rare Dr. Seuss book was uncovered, what it reveals about Geisel's creative process, and how publishers are thinking about his complicated legacy today.

[00:00:57]Claire, thank you so much for being here.

[00:00:58]>> Dana, thanks for having me.

[00:01:00]>> Claire, take us inside the archives.

[00:01:02]Where exactly was this manuscript found and how did the team stumble across it?

[00:01:07]>> Yeah, so at UC San Diego, there's this, you know, pretty incredibly designed Geisel library, but inside of it is an unassuming room where the Dr. Seuss archives are. There's There's plenty of different other types of archives here, but, you know, I think the Dr. Seuss archives are among the most notable.

[00:01:23]There's an astounding 20,000 files, the archivists told me.

[00:01:28]This was May of 2025. The Dr. Seuss Enterprises and publishers at Penguin Random House were searching for Cat in the Hat drawings because Ted Geisel drew them everywhere. The Cat in the Hat turns 70 next year, so they were looking for new marketing material that they could use and that's when they found Sing the 50 United States, a completed manuscript with a few sketches and a storyboard and they realized that I think this is a book.

[00:01:53]>> Can you describe this amazing moment when publishers realized this wasn't just a sketch or a loose idea, but a completed unpublished Dr. Seuss book.

[00:02:03]>> Yeah, I think I'm going to use Cat Reynolds, the editor at Penguin Random House. This is what she told me because I think it just sums it up perfectly.

[00:02:09]She said that this was total kismet. She called it a coincidence of cosmic proportions that they should find it just a year before the 250th anniversary of the United States.

[00:02:20]>> The book is called Sing the 50 United States. With the title, we can easily guess what's in the book, but can you describe the story?

[00:02:28]>> It's pretty much like it sounds. You know, the Cat in the Hat is trying to remember the names of all 50 states. I I feel like I remember being in fourth grade and trying to do that myself for an upcoming test in school. He's trying and kind of failing to to remember. He gets to about 49 of them and then he gets stuck. But luckily, the little the two little cats come in and they can help him finish the job. There's also an accompanying song, which you heard at the top of this episode. You can see from Geisel's manuscript notes and just the title alone that he intended this to be a song.

[00:02:59]>> And you'll be able to watch that video if you click the link in today's show notes. Claire, how does this book fit into the wider Dr. Seuss universe?

[00:03:07]>> I mean, there's the obvious that the Cat in the Hat is kind of our protagonist leading us along in this story. You think besides that, it kind of fits in the wider goal of him supporting children's learning. You know, way back when he wrote The Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham, you can see him using these books and this list of 300 something words that children are supposed to learn by a certain age when they're young. And here you can see that he thought it was important too for for kids to learn the geography of the United States.

[00:03:33]>> You write that this manuscript was unusually complete. Were there any major changes needed before the book could be published?

[00:03:41]>> Not to the manuscript, no. They actually this because they only found this last year and they published it this June, that was such an expedited timeline. And luckily, they didn't have to do a lot of copy editing because it was already written and they wanted it to be as authentic to what Ted Geisel envisioned.

[00:03:57]So, they didn't really change anything.

[00:03:59]They went word for word, punctuation mark for punctuation mark. They did have to add some more illustrations because we had this cover image or what they thought was a cover image, but they had to you know, he left behind a storyboard. So, they kind of worked off of that to see, you know, how they could finish the rest of the illustrations for this.

[00:04:17]>> So, this begs the question, do we know why it wasn't published right away?

[00:04:21]>> We don't know and that's something that I asked about a lot and I didn't really get a clear answer and I think because the publishers themselves don't know. I spoke to two people for the series of Sue stories that I'm doing who, you know, had met him in real life and there's even questions from them about why this was left unpublished. It's it's I mean, he was a perfectionist. So, it's possible that there were changes that he wanted to make or he just never got around to it. So, we have more coming in the coming weeks exploring postumus publishing and the conversations and decisions that have to happen behind the scenes to get that book onto shelves years or decades after an author has died.

[00:04:57]>> You mentioned the artwork. Half of what makes Dr. Seuss books iconic is the artwork. What did Geisel leave behind for this story?

[00:05:05]>> Most notable is the cover image. You can actually see that in some of my reporting. In this story, I have a photo of the cover of the book next to his original illustration of that. So, that they kind of tried to keep as close as possible. What he also left behind were storyboards almost. It's it looks like someone is charting out a graphic novel or a comic. So, you can see what he intended for each pages. There are parts where the Cat in the Hat you can see is getting stuck. There are parts where the little cats come in to help him. So, he really left behind an instruction guide of of how to finish this book.

[00:05:40]>> There's no date on the manuscript, but there are clues about when and why Geisel may have written it. What do we know?

[00:05:46]>> I think the most obvious one is it had to have been after Hawaii became a state in 1959, but it's possible that it also could have been intended for his Cat in the Hat songbook, which came out in 1967.

[00:05:59]So, maybe sometime around there, though there's really no way to tell.

[00:06:03]>> What sort of insight into Dr. Seuss did you glean, Claire, after looking at his drafts and notes?

[00:06:10]>> The level of perfectionism, I mean, now with digital printing, it's kind of hard to comprehend just how precise he would have had to be to get the colors right.

[00:06:18]People I spoke with for this story told me that he would often send work back to the printers when he didn't think the color was just right. So, the publishers for this one used colors that he had only used in other Cat in the Hat books so that they could honor, you know, his his precise love of color in in his art.

[00:06:36]Again, I I mentioned this earlier, but looking at his drafts is kind of like looking at an instruction manual. You can see he wrote for children's voices, the younger the better at the top.

[00:06:45]There's, you know, pages upon pages with just small tweaks, you know, spelling mistakes with names or shifting one one state away from the other, you know, I wanted to say Idaho here instead of Arkansas because it sounds better. You can see him kind of fiddling with the notes, um, and the state names to make sure that this, you know, could be as close to perfect as possible.

[00:07:09]>> There's also a bigger conversation here about Dr. Seuss's legacy including the estate's decision to stop publishing some books with racist or insensitive imagery. How are publishers trying to reconcile that while also moving the Seuss world forward?

[00:07:25]>> Yeah, when I asked the Dr. Seuss Enterprises about that, they said that they were focusing, you know, on these on these newer stories and that's why they ceased publication of the other ones because they didn't want to do further harm. This is definitely a contentious topic within the book world.

[00:07:39]There are people who really disagree with the decision to stop the publication of books. And there are other people who also who agree that it is, you know, a harm preventative measure. We actually have more reporting on that out now about Geisel as a complicated figure and the complicated legacy that he leaves in American history, in American literature. And your listeners can go ahead and and check that out now.

[00:08:03]>> And we have a links to all of those stories in today's show notes. Claire, lastly, I have to ask, what was it like seeing an original Dr. Seuss book in person?

[00:08:13]>> It was pretty incredible. I mean, these are books that I grew up reading. These are books that my parents grew up reading. So, my family has been reading Dr. Seuss books for generations now and to see his pencil markings in the in the margins and to see where he made mistakes, where he taped over drawings with there was this one framed draft of Oh, the Places You'll Go and he taped over some of his, you know, earlier drafts with like a Post-it note or other paper and there's Scotch tape there where he wanted to make edits, to see the rusted paper clip marks. That was pretty incredible. Just to see the early drafts of some of the books that, you know, meant so much to me as a kid come to life.

[00:08:56]It it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

[00:08:59]>> Seeing the 50 United States, the book is on bookshelves now. Seeing the 50 United States, the song that we played for you at the top is courtesy of Dr. Seuss Enterprises. Claire McFall Roy is USA Today's books reporter. It's always good to speak to you, Claire.

[00:09:13]>> Thanks so much for having me.

[00:09:15]>> Thanks for watching. I'm Dana Taylor.

[00:09:17]I'll see you next time.

[00:09:20]>> [music]