How the Grinch Stole Christmas!

How the Grinch Stole Christmas! is a children's book by Theodor Geisel, who wrote and illustrated it under the name Dr. Seuss, and it was published in 1957. The text is in rhymed verse, and it tells a short story about a creature who decides to sabotage a holiday and then discovers he has not understood what the holiday is made of.

The Grinch takes the town's presents, its trees, its decorations and the food for the feast, and waits on Christmas morning for the noise of disappointment. What he hears instead is the Whos singing, which forces him to reconsider what exactly Christmas is, and the closing pages turn on that realisation rather than on the return of everything he has stolen.

Seuss wrote the book in the 1950s, and its brevity and tight rhymes are characteristic of his work for young children. Because the story is short enough to read in one sitting and the illustrations are his own, it has been a standard Christmas book in English-speaking households since publication.