Dr. Seuss: A Sketch of Max from How the Grinch Stole Christmas!

In its October 20, 2025, sale, Heritage Auctions offered a small souvenir drawing by Dr. Seuss. It shows Max, the hapless dog in How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, the 1957 book. Max's head is seen in profile, smiling for once.

The 2011 Certificate of Authenticity that accompanies this sketch is interesting in that Linda Jones Enterprises, the authenticator, is identified as a Chuck Jones company. Jones, of course, is the animator and director of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas!," the 1966 television movie that is still the best adaptation of the Seuss Christmas classic. Could this be merely coincidence? You tell me.

Sold!

Dr. Seuss
Heritage Auctions listing of October 20, 2025

https://comics.ha.com/itm/animation-art/illustration/original-max-illustration-by-theodor-dr-seuss-geisel-mgm-c-1980s-this-original-sketch-of-max-the-dog-from/a/7403-19210.s?ic16=ViewItem-BrowseTabs-Auction-Archive-MyTrackedLots-101116

Dr. Seuss
Heritage Auctions item description

Hammer price

05160

Lee, Wendy, and Laurie's Copy of Dr. Seuss's How the Grinch Stole Christmas

This book needs no introduction.

Dr. Seuss
Sotheby's listing accessed August 23, 2023

https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/_dr-seuss-how-the-grinch-stole-christmas-signed-first-edition-dust-jacket-e7f7

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Dr. Seuss: Better Horses

A souvenir drawing by Dr. Seuss was presumably created for someone named Broder, unless that wasn't his name, who may have been a horse breeder, unless that wasn't his trade. It may just be a work of pure fancy, as drawings of two-headed horses often are.

"'When Better Horses are Breeded,
Broder will Brood them.'           
          (an old maxim by Dr. Seuss)"

Dr. Seuss
AbeBooks listing accessed June 4, 2022

https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=30781479825&searchurl=kn%3DDr.%2BSeuss%26sortby%3D1&cm_sp=snippet-_-srp1-_-image19

Note:  Attention horse breeders and others! I'm always eager to post original art by Dr. Seuss.

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Dr. Seuss: Roughs from The Sneetches

Last week's Fine Books and Manuscripts auction at Sotheby's included two preliminary book illustrations by Dr. Seuss for his 1961 classic story "The Sneetches." The signed drawings are close to two of the final published illustrations from The Sneetches and Other Stories, although they may possibly be trimmed; the images extend outward in the final book pages. It's rare to find such preliminary art on the market.

 

Dr. Seuss
Sotheby's Fine books and Manuscripts, Including Americana, Part 2
Lot 1129, July 21, 2022

https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2022/fine-books-and-manuscripts-including-americana-part-2/seuss-dr-theodor-seuss-geisel-you-want-stars-like-2

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/McBean-and-his-Star-On-Machine_fig2_234777748

https:

Note:  I'd be only too happy to post other preliminary book illustrations by Dr. Seuss, a.k.a. Theodore Seuss Geisel, but I don't have any on file. Those lucky enough to have access to original Seuss roughs are encouraged to submit scans or photos.

04028

Dr. Seuss: Starve the Squander Bug

During the Second World War, British illustrator Phillip Boydell created the Squander Bug character intended to discourage wasteful spending at home.

"The first of Boydell's six original Squander Bug sketches, here with its original name of the 'Money Grub.'"

—Wikipedia

In the United States, it was Dr. Seuss who reimagined the Squander Bug in a style we are all familiar with today. A 1943 banner poster shows a gluttonous creature in mirror images at either side (the dollar signs are not reversed). The Squander Bug personifies selfish domestic consumption. Thus the poster urges Americans to "Starve the Squander Bug" and to "Buy more war bonds." The implied assumption is that patriotic citizens already had bought some war bonds but that still more resources were needed for the war effort. Such calls for Americans to sacrifice a degree of short-term prosperity for a greater long-term good are rarely heard today.

Royal Books has a copy for sale:

Dr. Seuss
Starve the Squander Beast
Buy More War Bonds

Dr. Seuss

https://www.royalbooks.com/details.php?record=149616&jump=1&pkd_source=_newarr&utm_source=website&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=emaillists

Note:  This poster remains available from Royal Books at the time of posting.

Quick Links to the Attempted Bloggery Archives:

Dr. Seuss

World War II

Posters

Attempted Bloggery's Consumerist Index

 
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Josephine Kimball's Copy of Dr. Seuss's The Seven Lady Godivas

What could be better than a first edition of The Seven Lady Godivas (1939) by Dr. Seuss? How about a signed first edition, one with a Seussian inscription that reveals the long-suppressed identity of the eighth Lady Godiva.

Dr. Seuss
AbeBooks Listing Accessed February 29, 2020

https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=30440557920&searchurl=bi%3D0%26ds%3D30%26bx%3Doff%26sortby%3D17%26kn%3Dnew%2Byorker%2Bcartoons%26recentlyadded%3Dall%26sgnd%3Don&cm_sp=snippet-_-srp4-_-image21

Note:  At the time of this posting, the copy of Dr. Seuss's The Seven Lady Godivas that Raptis Rare Books calls "the finest association copy available" remains available.

Of course, if you've got a better copy, I'd like to see it and post it here.


Quick Links to the Attempted Bloggery Archives:

Dr. Seuss

Signed Books

Attempted Bloggery's Soul-Baring Index

 
03373

Dr. Seuss: A First Edition of The Lorax

Today Tom Bloom provides us with a scan of a first edition of The Lorax (1971), Dr. Seuss's influential children's book warning of the dangers of plundering our environment. The Lorax, as Tom likes to remind me, holds pride of place up in the header of this blog, a quotation from the book filling the space where a blog description is meant to go.

The Seuss quotation is, I think, a delightful but ultimately imperfect choice on my part. It is intended by the good Dr. Seuss to be a criticism of unbridled commercialism. In the context of this blog, though, any contemplation of the market's supposed excesses is necessarily tempered by a certain wonderment with the many unique items out there. To wit:

The Lorax (1971)
Dr. Seuss

Scan by Tom Bloom

I do have a runner-up quotation in reserve. It is for use in the unlikely event that I'm ever willing to part with the Lorax. It's the "Happy Thought" by Robert Louis Stevenson, verse XXIV from A Child's Garden of Verses.

  "The world is so full of a number of things,
  I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings."

This is such a positive ideal, but I'm afraid in the context of this blog it could be perceived as too materialistic. Stevenson's "things" I take to be much broader than the physical objects in any of my blog posts; he is asking us to seek happiness in all the world's wonders and not just, say, in first editions.

Note:  My thanks to Tom Bloom for the scan, which makes me happy as a king. Tom just helped out in identifying one of the New Yorker Profiles illustrators in my post on Hendrik Willem van Loon, so by my reckoning we are now at his thirteenth contribution to this blog.

Here's how the quotation that appears above all my posts appears in the book:

http://ouallinator.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/The-Lorax-storybook-2.pdf

Surprisingly, my adopted quotation actually does not occur in the animated television special that served as my own first encounter with the Lorax. It has been rewritten (by Dr. Seuss himself, I believe). You may view it at 6:13 in the video. "The birth of an industry! You poor stupid guy: You telling me what the public will buy?" That variant, alas, will never appear in my header.

"The Lorax" (1972)

Quick Links to the Attempted Bloggery Archives:

Dr. Seuss

Robert Louis Stevenson

Tom Bloom

Attempted Bloggery's Index Speaks for the Trees

03370

An Extra Nizzard from Dr. Seuss

Earlier this month, Bonhams sold this copy of The King's Stilts (1939) with an original drawing by Dr. Seuss. The Nizzard in question is a troublesome bird which appears in the story. Flocks of Nizzards threaten to peck away at the Dike Trees that protect the island kingdom of Binn from inundation by the surrounding waters. This extra Nizzard, on the other hand, should be no trouble.

Dr. Seuss, Drawing of a Nizzard inscibed "EXTRA NIZZARD FOR WOODY [Woodward Dike] from Dr. Seuss" in The King's Stilts (New York: Random House, 1939).

Dr. Seuss, Drawing of a Nizzard inscibed "EXTRA NIZZARD FOR WOODY [Woodward Dike] from Dr. Seuss" in The King's Stilts (New York: Random House, 1939).

http://www.bonhams.com/auctions/21652/lot/71/

July 29, 2013 Update:  The drawing has been purchased by a Connecticut bookseller who duly removed it from the book and had it framed. It is offered for sale once again, this time on eBay. Whatever the cost of framing, the markup is likely still above 100%. A cursory examination of the Meier and Sons Rare Books website reveals it is their common practice to dismantle books in order to frame original drawings within them. I suspect this is not all that unusual in the industry.

EBay Listing

http://www.ebay.com/itm/AN-ORIGINAL-SIGNED-AND-INSCRIBED-ASSOCIATION-DRAWING-BY-DR-SEUSS-OF-A-NIZZARD-/251598104127?pt=Antiquarian_Collectible&hash=item3a946a663f 

Note:  Don't miss my other posts on the good Dr. Seuss. Don't forget that he also furnished that quotation up on the header.

Other signed books with original drawings are featured on this blog as well. Got any to share?

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