'The Cat in the Hat is America!'

THE WORLD WAR II EDITORIAL CARTOONS OF THEODOR SEUSS GEISEL, by Richard H. Minear, The New Press, $25.The Cat in the Hat's red-and-white-striped leaning tower of a stove-pipe has become an American icon only slightly less recognizable than the Disney mouse ears," contemporary cartoonist Art Spiegelman (author of "Maus") writes in the introduction to this eye-opening picture book for adults.

"Seeing the slightly battered lid on the Seuss bird that represents the United States," Spiegelman writes, "is disorienting enough to bring on an epiphany: the prototype for the cat's famous headgear is actually an emblem deployed in countless political cartoons: Uncle Sam's red-and-white top hat! The Cat in the Hat is America!"

The long-necked "Seuss bird" is everywhere in this collection of political cartoons, and so are prototypes of nearly all of the other familiar Dr. Seuss characters, including Lorax and Yertl the Turtle, the circus fish and the ubiquitous whale, but here they are pressed into service as characters in single-panel political satires.

Dr. Seuss, it turns out, began his career as a cartoonist for the famous experimental daily newspaper of New York in the 1940s, PM, perhaps the last left-wing paper in the country of any circulation before it turned toes-up in 1948.

Who knew?

Who could have known, as we read these books to our kids and grandkids through the decades of the Cold War that the long-necked Seuss bird probably made his first appearance on Sept. 22, 1941, with a sign, "I am part Jewish" hanging from his beak! For it turns out that Theodor Seuss Geisel, son of German immigrant Republicans, was an ardent anti-fascist and critic of America-Firsters, anti-Semites and non-interventionists of every stripe.

For those who don't remember America First, it was a group of both conservatives and liberals who opposed getting into the war in Europe, and among its leading members was Charles Lindbergh, against whom Seuss directed volley after withering volley, as in the cartoon of July 16, 1941, that featured the familiar whale with the big eyes. Here the whale is presented as a fish out of water, an "isolationist" whale who lives way up on top of a mountain:

Said a whale, "There is so much commotion,

Such fights among fish in the ocean,

I'm saving my scalp

Living high on an Alp . . .

(Dear Lindy! He gave me a notion!)"

Eight years after his death, Dr. Seuss still has more than 50-plus titles still in print, and, in fact, "Green Eggs and Ham" is said to be the third-largest selling book in the English language.

This collection, with commentary by Richard H. Minear, is an illuminating look at the politics of the early 1940s from an oddly familiar voice, and it may even provide some clues to the deeper meanings of the good doctor's less obviously political children's tales.