He was one of the last doctors to make house calls--some 200 million of them in 20 languages. By the time of his death last week at 87, Dr. Seuss had journeyed on beyond Dr. Spock to a unique and hallowed place in the nurseries of the world.

Actually, the title was as imaginary as the name. The first doctorate Theodor Seuss Geisel ever earned was an honorary one, given by his alma mater, Dartmouth. Young Theodor began his education in the public schools of Springfield, Mass., where his father was a part-time zookeeper. The avid student decided to become a professor. After college he went to Oxford, where his attention was diverted by Helen Palmer, a fellow American student who would remain his wife until her death 40 years later. The couple returned to the States just in time for the Depression; Theodor fed his soul by trying to write serious novels and filled the refrigerator by concocting an ad campaign for a spray insecticide: "Quick, Henry, the Flit!"

"I was successful but frustrated," he recalled. To amuse himself he wrote a volume for the very young: And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street. In the Dick-and-Jane atmosphere of '30s children's books, it became an instant hit. The Seuss style was born fully developed: looping, free-style drawings; clanging, infectious rhymes; and a relentless logic. "If I start with a two-headed animal," he maintained, "I must never waver from that concept. There must be two hats in the closet, two toothbrushes in the bathroom and two sets of spectacles on the night table." Each succeeding book was a refraction of some life experience. If I Ran the Zoo acted out a childhood fantasy; the postwar Horton Hears a Who! ("A person's a person no matter how small") poignantly echoed the emotions he felt after visiting Hiroshima.

In the 1950s, Seuss began a one-Dr. battle against illiteracy. For beginning readers he created an overnight success, The Cat in the Hat, with a vocabulary of 220 words. Best seller followed best seller; prize followed award. He was given an Oscar for the animated cartoon Gerald McBoing-Boing, Emmys for Grinch TV specials, a Pulitzer citation. Generations devoured Green Eggs and Ham ("Sam! If you will let me be, I will try them. You will see"), The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins and Yertle the Turtle. As Geisel remembered it, "I used the word burp, and nobody had ever burped before on the pages of a children's book. It took a decision from the president of the publishing house before my vulgar turtle was permitted to do so." The childless author eventually lost interest in writing for grownups. He believed that "adults are obsolete children, and the hell with them."

For the past several decades, the white-bearded, bow-tied figure was a fixture in La Jolla, Calif., along with his second wife Audrey. He tooled around in a car with the license plate GRINCH and continued to work despite four cataract operations and a heart attack. His later volumes revealed the teacher hidden beneath the torrent of mirth. The Butter Battle Book spoke of the dangers of the nuclear-arms race; his final work, Oh, the Places You'll Go, took on the meaning of life.

For Geisel, that meaning was never in doubt: "It's wrong to talk about what's wrong with children today," he insisted. "They are living in an environment that we made. When enough people are worrying enough--about war, the environment, illiteracy--we'll begin to get those problems solved." Reason enough to believe:

It was T.S. Geisel who provoked all the chortles,

But it's old Dr. Seuss who has joined the immortals.

By Stefan Kanfer.