Long-lost Dr. Seuss book hits stores next week

Will it be filled with classic rhymes? Would it, could it, after all this time?

A long-lost Dr. Seuss book, “What Pet Should I Get” will be published Tuesday with a significant print run of 1 million copies. It’s the first book from the author’s hand in 25 years.

The manuscript is thought to have been written by Seuss in the late 1950s or early 1960s and tucked away. It remained undiscovered until 2013.

Seuss (Theodore Geisel) died in 1991 in La Jolla. Much of the contents of his office were given to his archive at UC San Diego, but a box of some drawings and papers had been stashed away. When his widow was having some of his things appraised, the manuscript was discovered.

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Originally labeled “The Pet Shop,” the manuscript was mostly complete but not entirely ready for publication. Seuss would type the text and tape it to his illustrations as he worked, typing new rhymes and taping over them as he went. Some of those taped slips had come loose, obscuring his final intentions. His last art director, Cathy Goldsmith (now associate publishing director at Random House), selected the colors to be used in the book.

“There’s a lot at stake here, for us and for him, and I really didn’t want to get this wrong,” Goldsmith told the New York Times.

Fans of Seuss’ book “One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish” will recognize the brother and sister in “What Pet Should I Get?” In the new book, they go to a store to choose a pet from the recognizable and made-up creatures there.

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