Seuss’s Story Ideas Were Sometimes Rejected
Before Geisel started working on “ The Cat in the Hat ,” he wanted to write a children’s story about climbing Mount Everest in freezing temperatures. His hope was that it would be a thrilling page-turner for kids (again, the opposite of the Dick and Jane texts schoolchildren were forced to read in those days).
Source: Shooting Parrots
But when he pitched the idea to a publisher, Geisel was told that he wasn’t allowed to use the words “Everest,” “scaling,” “peaks,” or “degrees,” because young readers supposedly wouldn’t recognize or understand them.