“We were afraid that the limitations Dr.Seuss put upon himself might have shackled his marvelous inventiveness. Those words, of course, were “cat” and “hat”.

In one case he stated that the first two words that rhymed on the list would be his title. In some of the versions of how Seuss wrote Cat in the Hat, it took him up to a year. Spaulding gave him a list of 225 words that he could use for the story. A writer of one of these articles, William Spaulding, challenged Seuss to write/illustrate a book that 6 and 7 year olds could read on their own. In the mid 1950s several articles about illiteracy in American children were on the rise. This is the first Dr.Seuss children’s book to have no dedication. Sally and her brother do not know what to say and the story ends with them asking the audience Just as the cat finishes cleaning the mother walks in to find her children sitting nicely in a clean house staring out the window with the fish calmly swimming in the bowl. Then the Cat in the Hat comes back with a cleaning up machine and exclaims, The Cat in the Hat hauls them out in their box and the children are left with a massive mess. The young boy realizes,Īnd just at that moment the fish sees their mother coming up the sidewalk! So, the young boy grabs his net and runs after Thing 1 and Thing 2 and captures them. They fly kites and wreak havoc, knocking over pots and stools and pictures and dragging around the children’s mother’s new gown. He comes inside with a big box and when he lifts the hook Thing 1 and Thing 2 come running out. The Cat in the Hat says he does not wish to go and has another good game lined up. Just at the height of his impressiveness the cat falls from the ball and all the items rain down on the children leaving a huge mess! The fish is even more upset and adamant that this is all a bad idea and that the cat should leave. His first game is balancing on a ball while holding several random items such as the fish, a teacup, an umbrella, a book, a rake and a cake, a fan and a toy man. Then the children’s fish gets very upset and wants the cat to leave because,īut the cat reassures the fish that his tricks are not bad and that he knows lots of fun games. The Cat in the Hat tells them they can have lots of “good fun that is funny!” When all of a sudden they hear a big “BUMP!” and in walks a cat in a hat. The young boy exclaims, “How I wish we had something to do!” but it is too wet to play outside so they sit inside doing nothing at all. The story opens with a young boy and his sister, Sally, sitting inside staring out the window on a rainy day.

This is someone who delighted in the chaos of life, who delighted in the seeming insanity of the world around him.”

“The Cat in the Hat and Ted Geisel were inseparable and the same.

Cat and the hat