According to Geisel's biographers Judith and Neil Morgan, Horton Hatches the Egg was born in 1940, the day after New Year's, when he took a break from drawing in his Park Avenue apartment and went for a walk. When he returned, he noticed that he had left a window open in his studio and that the wind had blown one sketch on transparent paper on top of another, making it look like an elephant was sitting in a tree.Morgan 1995, pp. 96-97 This account was based on interviews with Geisel, who had told similar stories about the book's creation to reporters asking about his creative process since as early as 1957. The story had changed with each telling but always involved the fortuitous juxtaposition of drawings of an elephant and a tree.Cohen 2004, pp. 2-5
