Life magazine article by John Hersey, titled "Why Do Students Bog Down on First R? A Local Committee Sheds Light on a National Problem: Reading. " In the article, Hersey was critical of school primers: In the classroom boys and girls are confronted with books that have insipid illustrations depicting the slicked-up lives of other children. [Existing primers] feature abnormally courteous, unnaturally clean boys and girls. .
. In bookstores, anyone can buy brighter, livelier books featuring strange and wonderful animals and children who behave naturally, i. e. , sometimes misbehave. Given incentive from school boards, publishers could do as well with primers. Hersey’s arguments were enumerated over ten pages of Life Magazine, which was the leading periodical during that time.
After detailing many issues contributing to the dilemma connected with student reading levels, Hersey asked toward the end of the article:Why should [school primers] not have pictures that widen rather than narrow the associative richness the children give to the words they illustrate — drawings like those of the wonderfully imaginative geniuses among children’s illustrators, Tenniel, Howard Pyle, "Dr. Seuss", Walt Disney? Dr. Seuss responded to this "challenge," and began work. His publisher supplied him with the sight vocabulary of 223 words, one that was in harmony with the words the child would be learning in school. In an interview he gave in Arizona magazine in June 1981, Dr.Seuss claimed the book took nine months to complete due to the difficulty in writing a book from the 223 selected words.
He added that the title for the book came from his desire to have the title rhyme and the first two suitable rhyming words that he could find from the list were "cat" and "hat". Dr. Seuss also regretted the association of his book and the "look say" reading method adopted during the Dewey revolt in the 1920s. He expressed the opinion that "..
. killing phonics was one of the greatest causes of illiteracy in the country. The Cat in the Hat In the first book featuring the character (The Cat in the Hat, 1957), the Cat brings a cheerful, exotic and exuberant form of chaos to a household of two young children one rainy day while their mother is out. Bringing with him two creatures appropriately named Thing One and Thing Two, the Cat performs all sorts of wacky tricks to amuse the children, with mixed results.
The Cat's antics are vainly opposed by the family pet, who is a sentient and articulate goldfish.The children (Sally and her older brother, who serves as the narrator) ultimately prove exemplary latchkey children, capturing the Things and bringing the Cat under control. He cleans up the house on his way out, disappearing seconds before the mother arrives. The book has been popular since its publication, and a logo featuring the Cat adorns all Dr.
Seuss publications and animated films produced after Cat in the Hat. Seuss wrote the book because he felt that there should be more entertaining and fun material for beginning readers.From a literary point of view, the book is a feat of skill, since it simultaneously maintains a strict triple meter, keeps to a tiny vocabulary, and tells an entertaining tale. Literary critics occasionally write recreational essays about the work, having fun with issues such as the absence of the mother and the psychological or symbolic characterizations of Cat, Things, and Fish. This book is written in a style common to Dr.
Seuss, anapestic tetrameter (see Dr. Seuss's meters).The Cat in the Hat has also been translated into Latin with the title Cattus Petasatus and into Yiddish with the title "di Kats der Payats". The story is 1626 words in length and uses a vocabulary of only 223 distinct words, of which 54 occur exactly once and 33 twice. Only a single word – another – has three syllables, while 14 have two and the remaining 221 are monosyllabic. The longest words are something and playthings.
The Cat in the Hat has gone on to sell 7. 2 million copies in the United States alone (up to 2000), making it the 9th best-selling hardcover children's book of all time.
