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A very scarce signed copy of this photo-illustrated children's book, the last book written by Dr. Seuss's wife, Helen Marion Palmer Geisel before her suicide. Palmer, a key executive over the Beginner Books imprint, collaborated on several picture books that explore the possibilities of using staged photographs as illustrations. The conceit of this book is that a boy builds a small house for a turtle. When the turtle runs away, he gets a new pet that doesn't fit in the house, so he expands the house, which grows bigger and more fanciful as his pets get bigger and bigger. Eventually when a police officer tells the boy that he can't keep a horse, he expands the house again, this time for a Boogle. "I don't know what a Boogle is. But one of these days I hope I'll find one." Part of the humor of the story comes from the fact that each new house continues to incorporate all the previous smaller houses. Helen Palmer was married to Dr. Seuss (Theodor "Ted" Geisel) for forty years. She, too, wrote children's books, often using the plausibly masculine name H. Marion Palmer, as with her series based on Walt Disney films in the 1940s. She won an Academy Award with her husband for the documentary Design for Death in 1947. She co-founded the Beginner Books company in the 1950s and was one of three partners in the business. Beginner Books "wouldn't have flourished without Helen Palmer Geisel" (Paul V. Allen, I Can Read It All By Myself, p. 29). Palmer has been largely forgotten, eclipsed by the second Mrs. Geisel, Audrey Stone Dimond, a close friend of the Geisels with whom Ted began having an affair about the time Helen became seriously ill in the mid-1960s. Helen committed suicide in 1967. In her suicide note she asked her husband, "What has happened to us?" and then continued presciently, "Your reputation with your friends and fans will not be harmed." She concluded with the request, "Sometimes, think of the fun we had thru the years." Not long after Helen's death, Ted wrote in a letter, "My best friend is being divorced and I'm going to Reno to comfort his wife." As soon as Mrs. Dimond established residency in Nevada (the fastest way to get divorced in the 1960s), she filed for divorce and married Ted. First edition (earliest identifiable printing, priced 195/195 with an ad for the Beginner Book Dictionary on the back panel). A very good copy in a very good dust jacket with short tears to the bottom edge. This copy is inscribed by the author and is very scarce thus?Helen Palmer signed few books?"To K[?] with best wishes from Helen Palmer." NB: Beginner Books do not identify different printings. Many and perhaps most titles were reprinted with no changes. Over time, as additional books were published in the series, the dust jackets changed. The jacket on this title was revised to advertise a list of Beginner Books in 1965. See Zielinski, Beginner Books: First Edition Guide (2024).
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