When Random House published Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax in 1971, Newsweek magazine called it “a hard-sell ecological allegory.” The book received a lukewarm reception from the public initially, as English Professor Donald E. Pease, the Ted and Helen Geisel Third Century Professor in the Humanities, explains in this video and in his Seuss biography, Theodor SEUSS Geisel (Oxford University Press, 2010).

“Some of Dr. Seuss’s most loyal fans expressed their disappointment at the way the tale’s message supplanted Dr. Seuss’s zaniness for its own sake,” Pease wrote. “The book did not get onto the best-seller lists until the environmental movement picked it up.”

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