John Hersey, whose article in Life had rallied Ted into action, thought Dr. “Having only a first-grade mind, I can recommend this as irresistible,” wrote an enthusiastic reviewer in the Los Angeles Times. “ still want to laugh at something that’s ridiculous,” insisted Ted, and critics were inclined to agree. Even if parents didn’t necessarily understand the pedagogy, it was easy to see the difference between the staid Dick and Jane and the rambunctious Cat in the Hat: kids wanted to read about the antics of the cat, just as Geisel had hoped. Parents, however, were more than happy to join Dr.

“ The Cat in the Hat is a revolt against authority, but it’s ameliorated by the fact that the cat cleans everything up at the end,” Geisel said later, sounding only a little disappointed. “I always pick up all my playthings,” the cat says matter-of-factly, then scoots away-for good, this time-with a coy tip of his hat.

until Ted, having fooled the reader with a fake-out ending, suddenly brings the cat back, sitting smartly behind the wheel of a vehicle with mechanical arms that quickly clean up the entire mess. As the children’s mother comes walking up the sidewalk toward the front door, the kids capture Thing One and Thing Two with a net-and the cat, sensing the fun is over, despondently packs up his wares and leaves. “He convinced me that I had as much responsibility to take as much time and work as hard as did.”Īs the book reaches its climax, Geisel has the Cat bring in two of his associates, the rambunctious Thing One and Thing Two-each with a shock of blue hair-who seem id incarnate, flying kites in the house and messily carrying on until even Geisel’s child narrator wearies of the antics. “He helped me realize that a paragraph in a children’s book is equal to a chapter in an adult book,” said Geisel. And Commins validated Geisel’s firm belief that writing for children was as hard, if not harder, than writing for adults. We had almost abstract discussions of the logical order of a story.” Commins, who had edited William Faulkner and Sinclair Lewis, took The Cat in the Hat as seriously as he did, say, Faulkner’s A Fable, which would win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1955. He made me defend myself, telling me that what I’d said on page 7 should have been on page 3.

He’d spend an hour talking about three or four lines. He’d make you think, and you’d come around to your own conclusion. “He would never tell you anything that you did wrong. “He was the kind of editor I loved,” Geisel said warmly. And rewrite he did, over and over, with the full support, aid, and encouragement of editor Saxe Commins at Random House.

Cat and the hat