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Paul franz/The Recorder

Deerfield dentist Charles D. Cohen, whom Random House calls “the world’s foremost Seuss scholar and collector of Seussiana,” discovered and saved from oblivion the stories that appear in “The Bippolo Seed and Other Lost Stories.”

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Paul franz/The Recorder

“The Bippolo Seed” and the other “lost” stories were originally published with black and white drawings. They were colored for their most recent publication by an illustrator who’d worked with Ted “Dr. Seuss” Geisel and knew his color preferences.

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Paul franz/The Recorder

“Tadd and Todd” was originally published in Redbook in August 1950.

DEERFIELD - "The Bippolo Seed and Other Lost Stories by Dr. Seuss" might be to children's literature what "The Basement Tapes" are to Bob Dylan fans: a chance to hear something new and fresh by a long-established master, created even before he was a household name.

This "new" Dr. Seuss book by Random House features seven relatively obscure stories written by Ted "Dr. Seuss" Geisel for Redbook Magazine back in 1950 and 1951 - years before "How the Grinch Stole Christmas!" and "Green Eggs and Ham" were published.

But the story of how Deerfield dentist Dr. Charles D. Cohen discovered and saved these stories from eventual oblivion is almost as fantastic as, say, "Horton Hears a Who."

"In the beginning, I didn't want to do any of this," says Cohen, sitting in his dining room beside a stack of "The Bippolo Seed" books and a few Redbook magazines from 1950. "I just wanted to read his stories. I'd seen an exhibit back in 1988 called 'Dr. Seuss from Then to Now.' Before then, I didn't know he'd done anything but children's books."

Cohen grew up reading Dr. Seuss books, but he was really bitten by the Seuss bug after seeing the exhibit. He wanted to learn more about Seuss' remarkable life beyond the children's books, but little information was available back then.

"What I found was a lot of misinformation," says Cohen, "and I started poking around to see what was true."

For instance, the "Dr. Seuss from Then to Now" exhibit catalog displayed one of Geisel's magazine illustrations that was identified as appearing on a Redbook Magazine in 1930 or 1931. Cohen wanted to see the actual magazine, so he asked staff at the Boston Public Library to pull that year of magazines from their archives. He went to Boston, just to see it - and ended up perusing all the Redbook issues of 1930, 1931 and subsequent years, until he found that artwork, which appeared in 1934.

The catalog made references to stories that Geisel had published in magazines, and Cohen began his own treasure hunt, tracking down and collecting those magazines, along with other Seuss/Geisel memorabilia.

On the hunt

Cohen thought he'd lose interest in Dr. Seuss after a few months, but his curiosity never waned. Each discovery showed him there was still more to learn. After Geisel died in 1991, Cohen was even more determined to find and preserve all kinds of artwork, illustrations, advertising novelties and other ephemera linked to Ted Geisel.

"The hope arises that somewhere - in a desk drawer, an attic or a publisher's vault - some unpublished manuscript lies waiting to be discovered" Cohen wrote in the introduction to "The Bippolo Seed."

"Our appetite whetted, we hunger for someone to unearth one last great work," he said.

From 1948 to 1959, Geisel had short stories published in magazines - "most of which were tossed out when the next month's issue arrived," Cohen said.

After tracing references to them, Cohen tracked down the magazines at libraries, photocopying them and eventually buying copies of the original magazines through the Internet.

Random House calls Cohen "the world's foremost Seuss scholar and collector of Seussiana." In 2004, Random House published Cohen's first book, "The Seuss, the Whole Seuss and Nothing But the Seuss: A Visual Biography of Theodor Seuss Geisel."

In early 2005, Time Magazine's Richard Corliss called Cohen's book "Best Pop Culture Book" of the year. And Dr. Seuss' widow, Audrey Geisel, wrote Cohen a note saying, "No one, but no one, has this incredible background on Ted that you have ... not anyone in his family or anywhere else."

Fortuitous connection

Cohen and Random House found each other by accident - thanks to the wonders of the Internet.

Random House owns the rights to all Dr. Seuss books, and after years of research, Cohen knew he wanted to write a book about Geisel. The only problem, he said, was how to get published.

Cohen often sold duplicate Seuss-related items through eBay, and among his customers was one Cathy Goldsmith, who bought some old magazines from Cohen that contained Dr. Seuss stories she had never heard of.

Goldsmith, a Random House art director, had worked with Geisel on his children's books. When Cohen found Goldsmith's name in a Dr. Seuss biography, he emailed to ask if she was the Cathy Goldsmith. "Busted," she wrote back.

Cohen eventually met with Goldsmith, Kate Klimo and Herb Cheyette of Dr. Seuss Enterprises and convinced them he was the right person to write that Seuss visual biography.

Since publication of "The Whole Seuss ..." Cohen has published commentaries, along with some of the "lost stories," in a 50th anniversary edition of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas!" and in a special edition of "Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories."

In June 2002, Cohen curated a Dr. Seuss exhibit at the Connecticut Valley Historical Museum of Springfield. It included many pieces from Cohen's extensive collection of Seuss memorabilia. Cohen says he would like to organize traveling Dr. Seuss exhibits.

"The Bippolo Seed" is Cohen's fourth Dr. Seuss book, but this book is the first to consist solely of stories that have never appeared in book form.

When these seven stories appeared in Redbook Magazine, the drawings were basically black and white, and the entire story took up only two pages - drawings included.

But "The Bippolo Seed" was created to look like the full-color storybooks produced during Geisel's lifetime.

"I'm an anti-colorizing-movies guy," Cohen said, "but I wanted this. Cathy Goldsmith had worked with him - she knew his color palette."

Reading pioneer

When Random House announced that this book of lost stories would be published this fall, Cohen read with amusement a comment by a reviewer in Australia, who said he would be "approaching this book with excitement and with trepidation."

"The excitement was because this would be the first new Dr. Seuss book in 20 years," Cohen explained. "The trepidation was because he wondered, 'Is it going to live up to the (Dr. Seuss) reputation?'

"That's what I thought, too," Cohen said.

When Cohen was looking for the old magazines containing Seuss stories, he said, he wondered, "Are they good stories or are they crappy?

"Then, when I got all these stories, I didn't read them; I wanted to collect them all. I liked the promise of a new Dr. Seuss story. I wanted to spread them out."

But in planning for the books, Cohen read all the stories, "and that's when I realized they were really good."

Geisel didn't start out rhyming his children's stories - of the first 10 "Dr. Seuss" stories, only four rhymed. But then, in 1950, Geisel was astonished to hear a 3-year-old boy recite Geisel's most recent book by heart.

Geisel, Cohen said, "like everyone else had been told that you can read when you're 6 or 7 years old. He saw there was something about the way he wrote that made it easy for children to memorize."

"These stories were meant to be read aloud so that children could hear it, memorize the stories, see the pictures and want to read."

Cohen said Geisel helped to pioneer beginners' books for early readers and that his readers for children supplanted the Dick and Jane books.

According to Cohen, Geisel accomplished much in his life, "but what is his lasting legacy is: he lowered the expectation of when children could learn to read. He was a huge force in changing children's literacy for the country."