The Cat in the Hat

The Cat in the Hat, iconic children’s picture book written and illustrated by Theodor Geisel under the pen name Dr. Seuss and published in 1957. Using simple words written in rollicking and repetitive rhyme, the book features a mischievous talking cat who attempts to entertain two siblings on a rainy day. The imaginative illustrations are stylized and use a limited palette of blues, reds, white, and black. A commercial success and an enduring classic, the book has sold millions of copies and spurred several adaptations.

Plot

The story begins with a pair of siblings, a boy and a girl, who are bored and home alone on a stormy day. The titular Cat in the Hat—a tall humanoid cat sporting a bow tie and a red-and-white-striped stovepipe hat—appears and promises to teach the dumbfounded children some tricks and games. The children’s fish warns them against allowing the Cat to stay while their mother is out, but the Cat dismisses him with a game he calls “up-up-up with a fish,” in which the Cat precariously balances the fish and an ever-growing assortment of objects while he stands on a ball. When the Cat eventually loses his balance and drops all the items, the fish, who landed safely in a teapot, chastises him for making a mess and again urges the children to send the Cat away. Quickly promising more fun, the Cat then brings in a big red box, from which he releases the blue-haired Thing One and Thing Two. The Cat reassures the children:

They are tame. Oh so tame!
They have come here to play.
They will give you some fun
On this wet, wet, wet day.

To the fish and the bewildered children’s dismay, however, the unruly Things immediately begin to fly kites through the house, knocking pictures off the walls and making a tangled mess with the kite strings. When the panicked fish spots the children’s mother returning, the boy gathers his senses and catches the naughty Things with a net. The Cat, hurt that his game was not well received, sadly takes his Things and departs, leaving the children and the fish alone and daunted by the wrecked house. In a surprising change of heart, the Cat quickly returns with a machine that rapidly cleans everything up and then bids them farewell once again. The story ends with the children—now sitting angelically in their chairs at the window—debating whether or not to tell their mother about the events of the day as she steps into the house. Seamlessly breaking the fourth wall, the children ask the reader:

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Should we tell her about it?
Now, what should we do?
Well…
What would you do?
If your mother asked you?

Background and reception

The idea for the book was inspired by a 1954 article in Life magazine in which author John Hersey specifically called on Dr. Seuss (and others) to write books to replace spiritless reading primers like Fun with Dick and Jane. Hersey criticized the current readers as containing “insipid illustrations depicting the slicked-up lives of other children” and said that the stories and art are “uniform, bland, idealized and terribly literal.” In response, William Spaulding, then a director at Houghton Mifflin, provided Geisel with a vocabulary list for six- and seven-year-olds to see if he could answer Hersey’s call. (Given that Geisel was already under contract with Random House at that time, the two publishers agreed that Houghton Mifflin would publish an education edition for schools and that Random House would publish the trade edition for bookstores and the general public.) Initially frustrated with the limited list of less than 240 words, Geisel narrowed down the task by seeking out two rhyming words, which ultimately resulted in both the title and subject of the book. Though The Cat in the Hat is among his most well-known works, Geisel described it as “painful to write when you can’t use any adjectives and few nouns.” The book was an enduring critical and commercial success—at its 60-year anniversary in 2017, Random House had sold more than 16 million copies of the book.

A number of Seuss’s books have racist caricatures and are no longer published, and some of his work as a political cartoonist during World War II is deeply problematic in its portrayal of Japanese citizens and Japanese Americans. A modern assessment of his body of work has prompted discussion about possible racial elements in The Cat in the Hat. Some have argued that the Cat’s white gloves and appearance are rooted in blackface minstrelsy and were inspired by Annie Williams, a Black elevator operator at Houghton Mifflin who wore white gloves. Others have defended the work and pointed to two other culturally significant feline characters—Krazy Kat and Felix the Cat—as his likely sources of inspiration.

Film and adaptations

The book’s characters, especially the Cat, appear in a number of other Dr. Seuss books (and in many derivative works and products), and The Cat in the Hat has been adapted into many formats since its release, including a stage musical, a television show, and a video game. Perhaps the most infamous adaptation is the 2003 feature film version starring Mike Meyers as the Cat. The film, which was panned by critics, was so poorly received that it prompted Geisel’s widow to publicly forbid Hollywood from making live-action portrayals of Geisel’s characters.