"MUCH, MUCH TOO YOUNG TO BE READING STUFF OF THIS SORT": YOU’RE ONLY OLD ONCE!, WONDERFULLY INSCRIBED BY SEUSS

SEUSS, Dr. You're Only Old Once! New York: Random House, (1986). Quarto, original half brown cloth, original dust jacket. $1600.

First trade edition of Seuss’ picture book “for obsolete children,” wittily inscribed by him with his characteristic flourish: "for James O. Freedman (Who is much, much too young to be reading stuff of this sort.) Dr. Seuss."

"In You're Only Old Once! Ted was less a storyteller or narrator than a memoirist. The book was his unexpected lamentation about the infirmities of age and the indignities of the health-care system, written when he was 'fed up with a social life consisting entirely of doctors" (Morgan, 261). The book saw publication on Geisel's 82nd birthday. Published in the same year as the signed limited edition of 500 copies. Younger & Hirsch 83A. This copy is likely inscribed to James O. Freedman, the American educator who was Dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School from 1979 to 1982, before becoming the 16th president of the University of Iowa from 1982 to 1987, and then the 15th president of Dartmouth College, from 1987 to 1998. Seuss was a graduate of Dartmouth. In fact, Freedman read Green Eggs and Ham to kick off a 24-hour Seuss reading as part of a celebration of Seuss' life in 1991. Owner gift inscription to Freedman above Seuss' inscription.

Dust jacket price-clipped. A fine inscribed copy.