How the Grinch Stole Christmas!

Plot

The Grinch is a bitter, grouchy, cave-dwelling creature with a heart "two sizes too small" who lives on snowy Mount Crumpit, a steep high mountain just north of the town of Whoville, home of the merry and warm-hearted Whos. His only companion is his unloved, but loyal dog, Max. From his cave, the Grinch can hear the noisy Christmas festivities that take place in Whoville. Annoyed, he decides to stop Christmas from coming by stealing their presents, trees, and food for their Christmas feast. He crudely disguises himself as Santa Claus, and forces Max, disguised as a reindeer, to drag a sleigh to Whoville. Once there, the Grinch slides down the chimney and steals all of the Whos' Christmas presents, the Christmas tree, and the log for their fire. He is briefly interrupted in his burglary by Cindy Lou, a little Who girl, but concocts a crafty lie to effect his escape from her home.

The Grinch then takes his sleigh to the top of Mount Crumpit, and prepares to dump all of the presents into the abyss. As dawn breaks, he expects to hear the Whos' bitter and sorrowful cries, but is confused to hear them singing a joyous Christmas song instead. He puzzles for a moment until it dawns on him that "maybe Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more" than just presents and feasting. The Grinch's shrunken heart suddenly grows three sizes. The reformed Grinch returns all of the Whos' presents and trimmings and is warmly invited to the Whos' feast, where he has the honor of carving the Roast Beast.

Creation and publication

The Grinch first appeared in a 32-line illustrated poem by Dr. Seuss called "The Hoobub and the Grinch," which was originally published in the May 1955 edition of Redbook magazine. Dr. Seuss began work on How the Grinch Stole Christmas! a couple years later, around the beginning of 1957. He had recently completed The Cat in the Hat and was in the midst of founding Beginner Books with Phyllis and Bennett Cerf and his wife, Helen Palmer Geisel. Helen, who had ongoing medical problems and had suffered a small stroke in April 1957, nevertheless acted as an unofficial editor, as she had with previous Dr. Seuss books. Dr. Seuss wrote the book quickly and was mostly finished with it within a few weeks. Biographers Judith and Neil Morgan wrote, "It was the easiest book of his career to write, except for its conclusion." According to Dr. Seuss,

"I got hung up getting the Grinch out of the mess. I got into a situation where I sounded like a second-rate preacher or some biblical truisim... Finally in desperation... without making any statement whatever, I showed the Grinch and the Whos together at the table, and made a pun of the Grinch carving the 'roast beast.' ... I had gone through thousands of religious choices, and then after three months it came out like that."

By mid-May 1957, the book was finished and in the mail to the Random House offices in New York. In June, the Dr. Seuss and his wife took a month-long vacation to Hawaii, where he checked and returned the book's galley proof. The book debuted in December 1957, in both a book version published by Random House and in an issue of Redbook. Dr. Seuss dedicated the book to Theodor "Teddy" Owens, the one-year-old son of his niece, Peggy Owens.

Reception

M.S. Libby, writing in the New York Herald Tribune, compared the book favorably to Dr. Seuss's earlier works: "His peculiar and original genius in line and word is always the same, yet, so rich are the variations he plays on his themes, always fresh and amusing." Kirkus Reviews wrote, "Youngsters will be in transports over the goofy gaiety of Dr. Seuss's first book about a villain." The reviewer called the Grinch "easily the best Christmas-cad since Scrooge." Ellen Lewis Buell, in her review in The New York Times, praised the book's handling of its moral, as well as its illustrations and verse. She wrote,

"Even if you prefer Dr. Seuss in a purely antic mood, you must admit that if there's a moral to be pointed out, no one can do it more gaily. The reader is swept along by the ebullient rhymes and the weirdly zany pictures until he is limp with relief when the Grinch reforms and, like the latter, mellow with good feelings."

The review for The Saturday Review of Literature stated: "The inimitable Dr. Seuss has brought off a fresh triumph in his new picture book... The verse is as lively and the pages are as bright and colorful as anyone could wish." The reviewer suggested that parents and older siblings reading the book to young children would also enjoy its moral and humor. Charlotte Jackson of the San Francisco Chronicle called the book "wonderful fantasy, in the true Dr. Seuss manner, with pictures in the Christmas colors."

Analysis

Some writers, including Dr. Seuss himself, have made a connection between the Grinch and Dr. Seuss. In the story, the Grinch laments that he has had to put up with the Whos' celebration of Christmas for 53 years. As both Thomas Fensch and Charles Cohen note, Dr. Seuss was 53 when he wrote and published the book. Dr. Seuss himself asserted the connection in an article in the December 1957 edition of Redbook: "I was brushing my teeth on the morning of the 26th of last December when I noticed a very Grinch-ish countenance in the mirror. It was Seuss! So I wrote about my sour friend, the Grinch, to see if I could rediscover something about Christmas that obviously I'd lost." Seuss's step-daughter, Lark Dimond-Cates, stated in a speech in 2003, "I always thought the Cat... was Ted on his good days, and the Grinch was Ted on his bad days." Cohen notes that Seuss drove a car with a license plate that read "GRINCH".

Thomas Fensch notes that the Grinch is the first adult and the first villain to be a main character in a Dr. Seuss book.

Adaptations

The book has been adapted into a variety of media, including stage and film. Chuck Jones adapted the story as an animated special in 1966, featuring narration by Boris Karloff, who also provided the Grinch's voice. Thurl Ravenscroft sang "You're a Mean One Mr. Grinch" with lyrics written by Dr. Seuss himself. A musical stage version was produced by the Old Globe Theatre, San Diego, in 1998. It also was produced on Broadway and a limited-engagement US tour in 2008. The North American Tour began in the fall of 2010 and has subsequently toured every fall since. It will begin its 6th tour in October 2015. In 2000, the book was adapted into a live-action film, directed by Ron Howard and starring Jim Carrey as the Grinch. Illumination Entertainment is also developing a 3D animated feature film, titled How the Grinch Stole Christmas with Peter Candeland and Yarrow Cheney set to direct it and Benedict Cumberbatch voicing the Grinch. It was originally scheduled to be released on November 10, 2017, but in June 2016, it was pushed back to November 9, 2018.

Several audio recordings and audio-visual adaptations of the book have also been published. In 1975, Zero Mostel narrated an LP record of the story. In 1992, Random House Home Video released an updated animated version of the book narrated by Walter Matthau. In 2009, an interactive e-book version was released for the iPhone. The book was adapted into a 13-minute song, performed by the Boston Pops Orchestra, arranged by Danny Troob, and featuring bassist Reid Burton and actor Will LeBow narrating it on the Boston Pops's 2013 CD, "A Boston Pops Christmas---Live from Symphony Hall with Keith Lockhart".

As of 2005, the book had been translated into nine languages, including Latin as Quomodo Invidiosulus Nomine Grinchus Christi Natalem Abrogaverit: How the Grinch Stole Christmas in Latin by Jennifer Morrish Tunberg with the assistance of Terence O. Tunberg. The translation was published in October 1998 by Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers Inc.

Legacy

Based on a 2007 online poll, the National Education Association named How the Grinch Stole Christmas! one of its "Teachers' Top 100 Books for Children". In 2012 it was ranked number 61 among the "Top 100 Picture Books" in a survey published by School Library Journal – the fourth of five Dr. Seuss books on the list.

The Grinch appears in the animated specials Halloween Is Grinch Night and The Grinch Grinches the Cat in the Hat and he and Max also appear in the children's show The Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss. The Grinch, Cindy Lou Who, and Max, appear in Seussical, a musical which takes it plot from several Dr. Seuss books.