In 1957, a few months before Christmas, a book came out that added a new character to the public imagination regarding the most important holiday of the year. It tells the story of a funny and resentful creature who wanders around the town of Whoville with just one aim: ruining everyone’s Christmas. That’s right: we’re talking about the ultimate anti-Christmas villain: the Grinch.

The brainchild of renowned American children’s author Dr. Seuss, the Grinch and his clumsy attempt to steal Christmas have remained popular with readers around the world throughout the decades. Two successful adaptations helped to cement the work’s place in the public’s consciousnesses: its transformation from a book to a cartoon in 1966 and its film version featuring the talented Jim Carrey as the gruff, green-skinned creature in 2000.

But the fact that the Grinch now has a place in our minds alongside Santa when we think about the Christmas festivities is mainly due to Dr. Seuss’ literary invention. So, without further ado, let’s investigate the most famous covers that have accompanied the adventures in print of Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas! It’s a story full of interesting facts: did you know, for example, that the Grinch wasn’t always green?

The first cover of Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas!

The first edition of How the Grinch Stole Christmas! was released in 1957, a few months before the festive season. This rhyming poem about a solitary creature who hates Christmas was written and illustrated by Theodore Seuss Geisel, AKA Dr. Seuss.

The American children’s author had just published his bestseller The Cat in the Hat, but apparently he was going through a rather tough time. According to various reports, on 26 December the previous year Dr. Seuss was brushing his teeth when he noticed a decidedly grinchlike look on his face reflected in the mirror! It was the author’s loathing of the commercialisation of the festive period that inspired his anti-Christmas masterpiece: ‘Something had gone wrong with Christmas, I realized, or more likely with me. So I wrote the story about my sour friend, the Grinch, to see if I could rediscover something about Christmas that obviously I’d lost’ Dr. Seuss recounted in an interview.

Despite starring a grumpy creature who hates Christmas – perhaps because his heart is a couple of sizes smaller than normal – the original cover of How the Grinch Stole Christmas! is rather festive, at least in terms of its colour scheme: red, white and green, the hues typically associated with Christmas [read our article ‘The stories behind Christmas colours and symbols’].

The background cover is a standard Christmas red, while the grumbling creature’s eyes are light red. Green is used for small graphic details and for the author’s name, and the book’s title is white.

But, why, I hear you ask, is the Grinch not green?

On the cover of the book’s first edition, the Grinch does not have the green skin we are accustomed to, nor is he green inside the volume, where the only colours used are red and white. Dr. Seuss originally drew him as white with pinkish eyes.

The Grinch only turned green a few years later… let’s find out why!

The Grinch turns green, including on the covers

It was a few years before the Grinch took on the appearance we know today, with green skin and yellow eyes. To be precise, it was 1966, the year the renowned cartoon version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas! was broadcast as a Christmas special on the CBS networks in the USA.

Although the book was an astonishing success, it was perhaps at this moment that the Grinch became part of the Christmas lexicon, first in America and then all around the world. Over the course of 25 minutes, the cartoon slightly reworked the original story: some characters – like the girl Cindy Lou – were fleshed out, and most importantly… the Grinch changed colour! His eyes became yellow and his skin turned bright green – exactly as we know him today.

Apparently, the Grinch’s colour had nothing to do with green being a Christmassy colour. It was chosen by the director Chuck Jones who happened to be renting a car in precisely that hue. Dr. Seuss – who supervised the animated adaptation of his work very closely – was not so much worried by the choice of colour as by the fact that the Grinch’s face now resembled the director Chuck Jones’s.

The first full-colour versions of the book started to appear at this point, featuring the creature’s new colour on the cover. One of the most beautiful is this sparkling golden box edition released by HarperCollins to mark the book’s 60th birthday.

The cover of How the Grinch Stole Christmas! with a large 3D heart

One of our favourite How the Grinch Stole Christmas! covers puts the creature’s heart at centre stage. In the book, Dr. Seuss suggests that the Grinch may hate Christmas due to his extremely small heart, and so, when the Grinch discovers that Christmas is not just about toys and consumerism, his heart gets three times bigger!

It is therefore wonderful to see the Grinch’s heart as the star of this 3D version of the cover for the Grow Your Heart edition, where the reader can watch the Grinch’s heart grow before their very eyes! Perhaps this might inspire one of our readers?

All the other covers of How the Grinch Stole Christmas!

Decade after decade, How the Grinch Stole Christmas! captured the imagination of people in the USA and throughout the rest of the world at Christmas, and it has been translated into dozens of languages. Not bad for a character that hates Christmas!

However, before we look at some international covers of the book, we’d like to draw your attention to the cover of its sequel. How the Grinch Lost Christmas , written by Alastair Heim and drawn in the style of Dr. Seuss by Aristides Ruiz, was published in 2023 in various languages.

As you can see, there’s a nice picture of the Grinch in the foreground, and the graphic design recalls the cover of the original book in several ways. Returning to the original work, the cover of one of the French editions features an intriguing detail of our Christmas anti-hero’s adorable head:

In general, none of the editions of The Grinch use artwork from the successful film adaptations; they all feature a Dr. Seuss illustration on the cover. On this cover of a German edition, for instance, the star is busy making all the gifts stolen from the poor Who family disappear.

Image: picclick.de

Here is a Japanese cover. The drawing is again by Dr. Seusa, but the graphic layout makes the Grinch look a lot more… erm… comicsy!

But the first cover of How the Grinch Stole Christmas! remains the most popular, including among the international editions. Here, for instance, is an Italian version and a Ukrainian one; if you look carefully, you’ll see that the Grinch is green in the former, but not the latter. Which do you prefer?

Has one of the best-loved anti-heroes in children’s literature inspired you? Perhaps the story of the Grinch’s creation and the book’s covers have given you some good ideas for your future Christmas projects? Let us know!