8. The Bippolo Seed and Other Lost Stories

By Dr. Seuss

Assembled by Charles D. Cohen

Random House, 2011

$15, ages 6 and up, 72 pages

"Think left and think right and think low and think high!" Oh the thinks, Charles D. Cohen thought up, because he searched and he tried!

Cohen, the world's foremost Seuss scholar and collector, used his noggin just right when he followed a hunch that there was more to Seuss than many of us had read.

He burrowed into library collections and hunted the Internet to recover seven magazine stories written and illustrated by Dr. Seuss between 1948 and 1959  -- a challenge given that magazines then, as now, were routinely tossed out when the next month's issue arrived.

This amazing selection, culled from Redbook magazine, includes a few stories that may be familiar, like "The Bear, the Rabbit and the Zinniga-Zanniga," recorded by Marvin Miller in a Dr. Seuss Presents album.

In that story, a rabbit outwits a bear with a single eyelash.

But many of the stories will be delightfully, novelly new.

A New Dr. Seuss Book? Really?!

Yes!  "I meant what I said and I said what I meant!"

On Sept. 27, Random House will release The Bippolo Seed and Other Lost Stories, a collection of seven stories by the incomparable Dr. Seuss.

The stories were published in Redbook Magazine in 1950 and 1951, but never appeared in book form.

"We're like happy prospectors, having discovered a hidden vein of gold," said Kate Klimo, vice president of Random House/Golden Books Young Readers Group.

Here's a sneak peek:

1. "The Bear, the Rabbit and the Zinniga-Zanniga" is about a quick-thinking rabbit who outwits a bear with a single eyelash. *

(This story also was recorded by Marvin Miller in the album Dr. Seuss Presents: Fox in Socks/Green Eggs and Ham.)

2. "Gustav the Goldfish" is an early, rhymed version of the Beginner Book A Fish Out of Water, in which a boy buys a fish and is warned not to overfeed it.

3. "Tadd and Todd" is a tale passed down via photocopy to generations of twins.

4. "Steak for Supper" is about fantastic creatures who follow a boy home in anticipation of a steak dinner.

5. "The Bippolo Seed" is about a scheming cat who leads an innocent duck to make a bad decision.

6. "The Strange Shirt Spot" was inspired by the bathtub-ring scene in The Cat in the Hat Comes Back.

7. "The Great Henry McBride" is about a boy whose fantasies of a far-flung career are only bested by those of Dr. Seuss.

In an introduction, Dr. Seuss scholar and collector Charles D. Cohen discusses the stories' themes, including the importance of imagination and the dangers of greed.

He also notes that all seven marked a shift in Dr. Seuss's writing style from primarily prose to the rhymes we've come to adore.

Due to printing limitations of those early magazines, Random House is enhancing the colors of the illustrations to match Dr. Seuss's other books.

For more about Seuss's original stories in Redbook, visit Children's Picturebook Collecting here.

 * You may have noticed that the word, "Zinniga-Zanniga," is spelled differently in Redbook. According to Cohen, in his book The Seuss, the Whole Seuss, and Nothing But the Seuss, the title word was likely misprinted as "Zinniga-Zinnaga."