#BOOKREVIEW
CHILDREN’S PICTURE BOOK REVIEW AS A WRITER AND A READER

Title: The Cat In The Hat
Author & Illustrator: Dr. Seuss
Genre: Fiction, Children’s Picture Book
Target Reader: 6 – 9 years

I am glad that I picked up this book for review. I got to learn from a world-renowned author, Dr. Seuss, and understand some key aspects of writing a children’s book. Dr. Seuss is Theodor Seuss Geisel’s* pseudonym. During high school, his art teacher didn’t like his work and advised him to change his career. In college, Geisel edited the school’s humour magazine. Due to a prank, he was asked to leave. He continued to write and edit under the name of Dr. Seuss.

The Cat In The Hat came to life in 1957 due to a bet between the author and his friend, who published children’s books and felt that children’s primers were boring. (Primers are books with few words that use pictures or shapes to describe the word.)

The author took that as a challenge, and after nine months of hard work, came out with a book that became an instant success. Through this book, he taught that children’s books can be colourful and there is a strong relationship between pictures and words that enhance the reader’s experience.

The Cat In The Hat is the story of two children who are alone at home wanting to go out to play but are homebound due to rain, a cat who comes to the house uninvited to entertain children and a fish who keeps reminding the kids that the cat should not be in house while their mom is away.

This is a fun, rhythmic, easy-to-read book for beginner readers from grades 1 to 3. Anyone learning English as a second language will benefit from this book too. How? The simple words, repetitive sentences, pictures that support text, and a few all-caps words are the basic tools to teach any language. And this book successfully used those strategies to promote reading.

The book, although written seven decades ago, is relevant in this age of technology. The two kids in the book didn’t know what to do inside home because of the rain. Now, replace rain with mobile. Fast forward today, take away a mobile or an iPad from children and they wouldn’t know what to do. They will be lost, confused and bored.

That’s when the cat shows different ways to enjoy being indoors, involving movement, fun, and imaginative play.

“I know it is wet
And the sun is not sunny
But we can have
Lots of good fun that is funny!”

The fish in the book is like a sweet nanny, reminding everyone that mom is not at home and will not appreciate the mess created by the cat. She alerts the children that mom is almost there. The cat cleans the whole mess and leaves the house in perfect order.

When mom returns and asks what the kids did in her absence, they look at each other, thinking whether they should tell her.

The book ends on a thought-provoking, self-reflecting question
Should we tell her about it?
Now, what SHOULD we do?
Well…
What would you do
If your mother asked you?
I read somewhere that the underlying message of this book is: If your world is unsatisfying, change it.
In my view, The Cat In The Hat shares these timeless lessons: 

For children: Everything is good within limits. Play on iPads but play in parks too.
Parents: Boredom is healthy, it brings out creativity.
Teachers: Learning can be fun because happy minds are creative minds.

In short, The Cat In The Hat is more than a classic—it’s a creative blueprint for engaging young readers, making learning joyful, and reminding us all that imagination has no age limit. 

* https://www.britannica.com/biography/Dr-Seuss

---