How the Grinch Stole Christmas! and word is always the same, yet, so rich are the variations he plays on his themes, always fresh and amusing." "Kirkus Reviews" wrote, "Youngsters will be in transports over the goofy gaiety of Dr. Seuss's first book about a villain." The reviewer called the Grinch "easily the best Christmas-cad since Scrooge." Ellen Lewis Buell, in her review in "The New York Times", praised the book's handling of its moral, as well as its illustrations and verse. She wrote, "Even if you prefer Dr. Seuss in a purely antic mood, you must admit that if there's a moral to be
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