This classic from children’s literature has not aged noticeably since my childhood, and probably not since my parents’ childhood. The tension for the children between doing what is right (as spoken by the fish) and doing what is easy (letting the cat do what he wants), is one that has been mimicked in stories such as Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus by Mo Willems and many others. Still, no one does it quite like Dr. Seuss.
His rhymes are definitely part of what make his writing unique, yet anyone can rhyme, so there must be something about how the rhymes are created. The words themselves, as well as the sounds included in those words, are repeated often enough that the text is didactic, teaching children about the letter combinations and sounds associated with the words.
The illustrations of Dr. Seuss are also complete originals. There are characters and pictures that are totally invented, such as Thing 1 and Thing 2, but Seuss also has the ability to take something normal, and make it into something totally his own. The idea that a cat and a hat, two of the most common words imaginable, could become a trademark or a franchise that would be immediately recognizable throughout the world, is almost absurd. Yet Seuss managed to create just that, a completely new world that is miles from normal that is based on his own interpretation of things that are completely normal.
Geisel, T.S. (1957). The cat in the hat. New York, NY: Random House.
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