New Dr. Seuss book featured next week at UCSD

Theodor Geisel died in 1991 in La Jolla at age 87, but the books written under his better-known pen name of “Dr. Seuss” live on.

Geisel penned and illustrated more than 60 books during his lifetime. Now, UC San Diego’s Library -- renamed Geisel Library in 1995 -- will celebrate the release of a never-before-published Dr. Seuss book with an event on Tuesday, Sept. 3.

“Dr. Seuss’s Horse Museum” is being released Sept. 3 by Random House Children’s Books. The story is based on an unfinished manuscript and sketches by Geisel discovered in 2013, as completed by Australian illustrator Andrew Joyner.

The event is scheduled for 11 a.m. Tuesday at the UCSD Geisel Library, appropriately in its Seuss Room, at 9500 Gilman Drive in La Jolla.

“Dr. Seuss’s Horse Museum” is the seventh Dr. Seuss book released posthumously. Others were Daisy-Head Mayzie (1995), My Many Colored Days (1996), Hooray for Diffendoofer Day! (1998), The Bippolo Seed and Other Lost Stories (2011), Horton and the Kwuggerbug and More Lost Stories (2014), and What Pet Should I Get? (2015)

UCSD’s website gives a quick peek at the book. It says it includes cameos by classic Dr. Seuss characters, such as the Cat in the Hat and The Grinch, while featuring whimsical illustrations inspired by Dr. Seuss’s original sketches combined with full-color photographic reproductions of horse-themed artwork by Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, George Stubbs and others.

Copies of Dr. Seuss’s Horse Museum will be sold at the event by the UC San Diego Bookstore while supplies last. Book readings, live music, and a coloring activity will accompany the book sales, the website says.

UCSD is also currently exhibiting “Boids & Beasties,” selected original drawings and sketches from the library’s Dr. Seuss Collection, through Oct. 6. “Boids & Beasties” was Geisel’s own term for his fantastical creatures.

Beginning in 1991, the UC San Diego Library’s Special Collections & Archives became the official home for the original works of Dr. Seuss. The collection now holds more than 20,000 items, including original drawings, sketches, manuscript drafts, books, notebooks, photographs and memorabilia.

A long-time resident of La Jolla, his personal collection of drawings, scrapbooks, sketches, and other works were donated to UC San Diego after his death in 1991, a gift of his widow, Audrey Geisel.

Also featured in the exhibition are some of Geisel’s earliest childhood drawings, examples from decades of his work as an advertising and magazine artist, and political cartoons from the days leading up to and during World War II.