History of Dr. Seuss' work is a kick

THE ANNOTATED CAT: UNDER THE HATS OF SEUSS AND HIS CATS, introduction and annotations by Philip Nel, Random House, 190 pages, $30

Fifty years ago, Dr. Seuss (Ted Geisel) responded to the criticism of children's primers as boring (remember "Dick and Jane"?) by writing a book that "first graders couldn't put down."

The result was "The Cat in the Hat."

But it wasn't easy — it took him 18 months to write it.

He used a vocabulary of only 50 words, and today the book is still a big seller. In fact, it's a legend.

Dr. Seuss taught not only reading, but poetry, politics, ethics, comics, history — even "con-artistry" in the most basic of words.

Now Philip Nel, an English professor in Kansas State University's graduate level program in children's literature, has written "The Annotated Cat," an annotated history of Seuss' work, to commemorate 50 years, and to provide interesting background and history.

And the result is a kick.

Nel grew up reading such Dr. Seuss books as "Green Eggs and Ham," so he cultivates a personal interest. Nel has written a number of books about children's literature, and he and Random House hope that people across America will celebrate the Dr. Seuss birthday by grabbing a child and reading "The Cat in the Hat" together — or its sequel, "The Cat in the Hat Comes Back."

Nel's annotated book includes not only the complete text of the "Cat" books but the art that went with them, along with two essays by Seuss, one magazine story, photographs and page-by-page annotations with information about the books and the man who wrote them.

In one of the Seuss essays, the celebrated writer tells of testing his ideas for the "Cat" books on his nephew, Norval, age 6. As he watched Norval watch television, he discovered that he was interested in all the same things most adults are interested in — "murders, nautch dancers, beer commercials, the home life of the ant, jungle tigers — submarines."

But Norval was apparently most excited as he watched a story of "a chiller-diller expedition scaling Mt. Everest." So the next day, Seuss discussed his discovery with a schoolbook publisher, who reminded Seuss that he would have to be more limited about his use of words.