who was very reluctant. Publication and reception Horton Hatches the Egg was published by Random House in fall 1940 to immediate success. It received primarily positive notice from critics. Kirkus Reviews called it "sheer nonsense, but good fun". The reviewer for The New York Times Book Review wrote: "A moral is a new thing to find in a Dr. Seuss book, but it doesn't much interfere with the hilarity with which he juggles an elephant up a tree. To an adult, the tale seems a little forced compared to his first grand yarns, less inevitable in its nonsense, but neither young nor old are going to quibble with the fantastic comedy of his pictures". The book also found early success with book buyers and the general public. It sold 6,000 copies in its first year and 1,600 in its second. Frances Chrystie, the juvenile buyer for FAO Schwarz, wrote to Bennett Cerf, Geisel's publisher, "I've been sitting alone in my apartment reading Horton aloud to myself over and over again... It's the funniest book I've ever seen... [Our] merchandise manager thinks he can find an elephant in the store, and we can make a tree and lay an egg and have a very fine window for Book Week". Mary Stix of James Book Store in Cincinnati, Ohio, noted the book's popularity with adults as well as children. Numerous booksellers invited Geisel to hold autographing events at their stores, and Cerf sent him on a tour across several U.S. cities to promote the book. However, the book was less well received in England, where it was rejected by seven publishers before Hamish Hamilton finally published it, to modest success, in 1947. This mirrored a general trend, as Dr. Seuss books were slow to catch on in England. Horton Hatches the Egg has remained popular in the United States. In 2001, Publishers Weekly reported that the book had sold 987,996 to that point, placing it at 138 in the magazine's list of the best-selling children's books of all time. It was included in Six by Seuss: A Treasury of Dr. Seuss Classics, which was the main selection for the Book-of-the-Month Club in June 1991. In 1992, less than a year after Geisel's death, Horton's refrain was included in the 16th edition of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. In 2007, the National Education Association listed the book as one of its "Teachers' Top 100 Books