As it turns out, the life of Sam-I-Am's creator was just about as whimsical and charmed as the places and faces featured in his beloved children's books. Born into small-town America in 1904, he grew up near Mulberry Street in Springfield, Mass. At Dartmouth College he produced his earliest cartoons for the campus humor magazine Jack-O-Lantern, still signing his real name, Ted Geisel. (When caught drinking during Prohibition and removed as editor, he started using his middle name, Seuss, as a pseudonym.) Dartmouth was also where the antlered dog in The Grinch Who Stole Christmas was born — in margin sketches drawn during zoology class. His many glittery awards — among them, a 1984 Pulitzer and Oscars for his work on documentaries in 1945 and '47 and for 1950's Best Cartoon, Gerald McBoing-Boing — belie the whimsy he cherished. As Geisel himself once noted, ''In the realm of nonsense, there are Mother Goose ... (Lewis) Carroll ... and Dr. Seuss.'' A cat wearing the right hat indeed. A-
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