Experts say posthumous publishing may signal economic hardship for the industry, but it’s also a way for book heirs to continue a family legacy.
New Dr. Seuss book discovered in author Theodor Geisel’s archives
An unpublished Dr. Seuss manuscript was recently found in author Geisel’s archives. Books Reporter Clare Mulroy explains how it came back to life.
Stan and Jan Berenstain were prolific authors, writing and illustrating hundreds of Berenstain Bears books in their lifetime. But they weren’t very good at keeping their work straight.
They stuck pages in envelopes and drawers, haphazardly in the basement. One time, their art was covered entirely in soot because they didn’t clean their oil furnace properly. When their son, Mike Berenstain, inherited the Berenstain franchise, he also inherited this disorganization.
Having collaborated with his parents since the late 1980s, Berenstain was no stranger to furthering the family legacy. Now, he cleaned and cataloged until he found something remarkable: Unpublished Berenstain books.
One relic from the 1960s was likely written when the couple worked under Theodor Geisel at Beginner Books. Dr. Seuss was a tough editor with high standards. This book didn’t make the cut – until now. “Too Loose, Too Tight, Just Right” will come out Oct. 6 from Random House Books for Young Readers.
Interestingly enough, Geisel – the likely culprit for the Berenstain book’s drawer-bound fate – is also back on shelves. His recently uncovered and published “Sing the 50 United States!” came out in June. And another beloved author, Leo Lionni, will return posthumously in 2027.
Publishing a book after an author has died is among the most stand-out ways to continue an author’s legacy and introduce new generations to timeless characters. But experts tell USA TODAY it’s also an indicator of hard times for the publishing industry, which is hungry to make new money off familiar names.
Posthumous books represent a desire for nostalgia, guaranteed bestsellers
While print sales were up for the second year in a row in 2025, declining literacy and leisure reading rates have publishers scrambling to keep Americans turning the pages.
Nostalgia sells. “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!”, a beloved children’s book and perennial graduation gift, sells more than a million copies every year, according to Random House Children’s Books data shared with USA TODAY.
According to Leonard Marcus, a children’s book historian, critic and author, classics are a given sale, even in times of economic hardship. He sees posthumous books as a consequence of publishing houses consolidating and becoming more corporate in recent decades. Today, marketing and copyright are king.
“Celebrity books and classic books are sort of a twin phenomenon from this point of view because they’re the two most familiar kinds of books that publishers can sort of count on to be recognizable in a big box store,” Marcus says. “Publishers in that culture are looking for marketing hooks for anything they do. It’s the first question that gets asked at a sales conference where new titles are being presented. What is the hook? So if you can say, ‘I have a new book by the author of “Where the Wild Things Are”’, that’s publishing gold.”
Mallory Loehr, president and publisher of Random House Children’s Books, says feeding the backlist – previously published works – is key. This doesn’t have to be with posthumous books, sometimes it’s new editions with fresh designs.
“You need new things coming out, new iterations coming out, because it brings people back,” she says. “But you also have to be thinking about what does this new generation need? What is this new generation of parents looking for?”
Seuss also sells. More than 800 million Dr. Seuss books have been sold, with 10 million out the door each year, according to Random House Children’s Books. The Grinch and the Cat in the Hat are evergreen in their relevance in pop culture, memes, Halloween costumes and holiday decorations.
“The world is telling us they’re still really excited and interested,” Loehr says.
When publishers found “Sing the 50 United States!” as a completed but unpublished manuscript in archives, they made careful decisions about who would “ghost” as Geisel to finish the illustrations and which colors he would’ve used. Geisel’s widow, Audrey, oversaw previous posthumous works “What Pet Should I Get?” and “Horse Museum.” She died in 2018. But even without a Geisel at the helm, they felt his instructions were specific.
“Today, for us, we’re looking at what is there. Is there enough of guidance for us to execute Ted Geisel’s vision?” says Cathy Goldsmith, Geisel’s longtime art director. “How much does this honor what we know about his mission, which is making learning to read easy and fun? And how well can we execute his vision without speaking to him?”
Should we resurrect the dead? The ethical debate of posthumous books
Posthumous publishing is one of the industry’s most contentious topics, for both adult and children’s authors. There are no standardized ethics.
Loehr prefers to follow the wishes of those managing the author’s estate: “Somebody didn’t publish it, but neither did they burn it or say ‘Please don’t publish it,’” she says. “If somebody had ever left instructions, like ‘I never want this published,’ 100%, you don’t.”
Marcus, the historian, says sometimes authors themselves aren’t a good judge of their own work while they’re living. There needs to be wiggle room in ethical debates.
“You just don’t want to have something wonderful lost because the person who created it had an absolute abhorrence of having work published posthumously,” Marcus says. “But it only works when the people who are taking the project on are qualified to do it and have the best interest of the book at heart.”
With celebrity authors, he remains skeptical. Having written around 3,000 children’s book reviews in his career, he doesn’t buy that these are new instant classics: “There’s a temptation to go with material that may not be first rate just because it’s guaranteed a sale.”
Philip Nel, a children’s literature scholar and author of several biographies and analyses of Seuss, also echoed this skepticism about “Sing the 50 United States!”, theorized to have been a scrapped song for “The Cat in the Hat Songbook.”
“You could look at the new book in the context of Seuss the businessman, but Seuss the artist was a perfectionist. He wouldn’t publish stuff that he felt was inferior. So Seuss himself I don’t think would approve of this at all,” Nel says.
Carrying the torch through new, uncovered works
In other cases, posthumous publishing threads generations and allows family members to connect with their late loved ones.
For example, Marcus helped facilitate a posthumous work from his late wife, the author Amy Schwartz. It would’ve been “such a waste” for the manuscript of “100 Things I Love About School” to stay in a drawer, but now this tribute to her legacy is “a really happy example of what can happen.”
Berenstain remembers asking his parents what they were working on in the studio in the house as they developed storyboards on a bulletin board. Finishing “Too Loose, Too Tight,” same as the other Berenstain Bears books he’s written, “takes me back to that period of my childhood.”
“I try just not to mess it up too bad,” Berenstain says. “I try to continue on the way it was in terms of its intention, its values, the kind of art it does, the quality of the writing, the kind of humor that’s in it.”
Annie Lionni is another steward in a similar position, the granddaughter of four-time Caldecott Honor-winning Leo Lionni. About a year before he died, he gave her a “high concept” draft, intending it to be published. Almost 30 years later, “How to Make Paper Mice” will finally come out in fall 2027 in collaboration with illustrator Oge Mora.
Before he died in 1999, Lionni asked Annie to protect and promote his work. She takes the job seriously. She’s careful not to put words in his mouth. She handles licensing, contracts, merchandising partnerships, new derivative books and much more. She refers to herself as “a nice version of Elvis Presley’s manager.”
The whole experience is a learning curve, she says. There’s no “guild or union or school” to teach you how to manage a famed author’s legacy.
“Most of (the derivative books) I think are great. There have been a couple that in retrospect I’m less fond of. And I have to chalk them up to learning experiences,” Lionni says. “I think that was true for Leo, too. Probably anybody who makes stuff of any kind or makes decisions certainly on behalf of somebody else is going to think twice and not always make the right choice.”
Clare Mulroy is USA TODAY’s Books Reporter, where she covers buzzy releases, chats with authors and dives into the culture of reading. Find her on Instagram, subscribe to our weekly Books newsletter or tell her what you’re reading at cmulroy@usatoday.com.