As of today, Becoming Dr. Seuss has been out for exactly eight weeks — and I couldn’t be happier with its reception. The reviews have been good — some of the best I’ve ever received, in fact — feedback from readers has been kind, and I’ve had the opportunity to talk about the life and work of Dr. Seuss on television, radio, and countless podcasts.
Here’s but a few:
First, here’s my appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. I taped this as a live remote from the WRC-TV studios in Washington, DC — the very same studios a University of Maryland student named Jim Henson would drive to every weeknight in the late 1950s to perform Sam and Friends before the cameras.
I was taken from the Green Room to a darkened studio where an earpiece was put in my right ear and I was asked to look into a camera, directly above a point where someone had helpfully stuck a Post-It note with an arrow drawn on it. I could hear the show live in my ear — and while there was a monitor on the floor to my left, I couldn’t watch unless I wanted to be seen on-camera looking down at the monitor. So I could hear the show without actually seeing anyone, which was a bit disorienting. But it was a good segment, with questions from everyone on the panel.
In radio, here are interviews I did with WMAL in Washington, DC, WNYC in New York, KPBS in San Diego, KSCJ in Iowa, KJZZ in Phoenix, and WAMC/Northeast Public Radio, as well as extended interviews with the Innovation Hub and with Connecticut Public Radio, where I talked about Dr. Seuss’s New England roots.
In print, the book has been reviewed at NPR, in the Christian Science Monitor, the A.V. Club, the New York Post, and — a thrill for me — The New Yorker.
Brian Jay Jones 