How the Grinch Stole Christmas! of "Redbook" magazine. Dr. Seuss began work on "How the Grinch Stole Christmas!" a couple of years later, around the beginning of 1957. He had recently completed "The Cat in the Hat" and was in the midst of founding Beginner Books with Phyllis and Bennett Cerf and his wife, Helen Palmer Geisel. Helen, who had ongoing medical problems and had suffered a small stroke in April 1957, nevertheless acted as an unofficial editor, as she had with previous Dr. Seuss books. Dr. Seuss wrote the book quickly and was mostly finished with it within a few weeks. Biographers Judith and
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