So, hey, check this out. A rollicking, rhyming cat and his friends Thing One and Thing Two (Not a What or a Who, but a Thing? … Who knew!) pop up unannounced at a house, trash the place beyond belief while doing weird, fun things like balancing books and fish and little toy ships and milk on a dish, much to the wide-eyed horror of a young boy and his disbelieving sister —- then scramble to clean up the mess just before the mother comes home. No harm, no foul. OK, wait … never mind. No one would read that. The cat — yes that cat … the Cat in the Hat — is 50. Just like that. Where’d the time go? Fifty years ago March 1 - in 1957 — Dr. Seuss unleashed his 13th children’s book on an unsuspecting nation of young readers — answering a challenge from his publisher to “write a book first-graders couldn’t put down.” Seuss’s trickster cat with his signature red-and-white stovepipe hat still hasn’t worn out his welcome, and I doubt he will over the next 50 years either. Cool cats like this hang around a long time. Happy B’day, Cat! Things you might not know about Dr. Seuss and his Cat in the Hat The publisher challenged Dr. Seuss to write the book that eventually turned out to be The Cat in the Hat after reading Pulitzer Prize author John Hersey’s Life Magazine article on illiterate students. Hersey argued that young students were having trouble reading because the ‘Dick and Jane’ primers were so boring (See Dick. See Jane. See Spot. See Spot run.) that kids were turning to comics and cartoons. His publisher asked Dr. Seuss to write his book using 223 words from a list of 348 words for beginning readers. He wound up using 236 — sometimes called the Perfect 236. (Green Eggs and Ham has just 50 words.) Longest words: ’something’ and ‘playthings.’ Dr. Seuss initially thought it would take him a week to write the book. It took him nine months. Dr. Seuss reportedly told friends that he based the face of his Cat in the Hat on an elevator operator at the Houghton Mifflin publishing house — a pleasant man with a ’secret smile’ who wore white gloves.
