How the Grinch Stole Christmas! it one of its "Teachers' Top 100 Books for Children". In 2012, it was ranked number 61 among the "Top 100 Picture Books" in a survey published by "School Library Journal" – the fourth of five Dr. Seuss books on the list. The book has been adapted as a 1966 animated TV film starring Boris Karloff, a 2000 live-action feature film starring Jim Carrey, and a 2018 computer-animated film starring Benedict Cumberbatch. The Grinch is a bitter, grouchy, cave-dwelling creature with a heart "two sizes too small" who is living as a hermit on the snowy Mount Crumpit, a steep
How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (TV special) songs and animated sequences without words (the longest being an extended scene in which the Grinch and Max comically descend into Whoville) were added. As all the major networks had flipped to full color schedules by 1966, the special was likewise produced in color, establishing the Grinch's color (white in the two-tone illustrations of the original book) as green, a convention used in later television specials featuring the character as well as the 2000 and 2018 film adaptations. The half-hour (with commercials) short was originally telecast in the United States on CBS on December 18, 1966. CBS repeated it annually