Book Report: The Cat In The Hat

By Akela Talamasca on April 30th, 2009

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Who doesn’t love Dr. Seuss’s The Cat In The Hat? Full of simple rhymes and silly characters, this book is a perennial kid favorite. As always, however, when re-reading this as an adult, I found a couple of odd moments that deserve some consideration.

So: two kids sitting alone indoors on a rainy day with nothing to do. Suddenly, in walks a six-foot-tall, anthropomorphized, walking, talking cat with a saggy, Lincolnesque stovepipe hat, a Southern gentleman’s bowtie, and an umbrella. So far, just like life. If you’re thinking that it’s a little weird for a stranger to just walk into someone’s house unexpectedly, the Cat himself underscores the point by saying “I know some good games we could play … I will show them to you. Your mother will not mind at all if I do.” He pre-empts any thought of impropriety by announcing that the authority figure has given her tacit — if absent — consent.

Parents, teach this to your kids right now: if a stranger ever comes up to them and says that their parents have said it’s okay to go with him, RUN AWAY SCREAMING. Especially if it’s a giant talking cat.

The Cat then goes on to demolish the house’s furnishings both alone and with the help of Thing 1 and Thing 2, two impish little dwarves that he keeps locked up in a box. Yes. This is a thing that is happening. Throughout, the voice of reason — the household fish — is repeatedly ignored by the children in the face of the Cat’s overwhelming charisma.

Finally, the boy wakes up from his stupor long enough to capture the two Things and demand that the Cat leave. As they stand, dumbfounded and worrying about how to explain the hideous mess to their mother, the Cat returns with God’s own vacuum cleaner to restore everything to its proper order, and all is mended. And in a final twist, when the mother comes home and asks the kids what they’ve been up to, the book asks the reader “Would you tell your mother what had happened?” What a way to generate the anxiety of not being believed when telling the truth! With no possible way to prove what they’d undergone, the kids of the story likely kept it all to themselves, which in its own way must be a fun shared secret. But by keeping mum, so to speak, they have now entered a new stage of their relationship with their mother, and have learned casual deception. Rod Serling must have consulted on this story.

As a fun exercise, after you read this to your child, ask what he or she would do in the same situation. No matter the response, you’ll learn something valuable.