In honor of Dr. Seuss' birthday I post an annual review of one of his works. Normally they fart sunshine and rainbows, but today we're going to spend a minute with the book that makes me want to . . . .

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I know this is a classic and it's Seuss and no one is supposed to blaspheme when it comes to his good name, but come on. Two kids who are stupid enough to let a creepy effing CAT in their house only to nearly demolish the place obviously are not mature enough to be left home alone on a rainy day. I know, I know, it's just a "cute" story, but sometimes you gotta call out the ridiculous. Right, Ron????

Anyfarts, happy Read Across America Day! Read this to your kids. They'll love it.

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Where are you, Christmas -
Do you remember
The one you used to know?
I'm not the same one
See what the time's done!
Is that why you let me go?
Faith Hill

A tot's Yuletide joy and innocence can erode like a limestone cliff. Until there is nothing left!

You can blame global warming, but some of us blame sin...
***

The Cat in the Hat is a transmogrifed Saint Nick, with his candy cane striped hat. He even has two of his elves with him - Thing One and Thing Two. They bode no earthly good for bored kids, like these two.

They wreak hellish havoc with their parent's home. It's as if Black Peter, not Santa, is all these tots merit!

Get it? The Cat in the Hat is Commercialism. It is SPOILING our kids. What happens when a bored mom tasks the kids with cleaning their room? Well, it has now become a job for a Thing One and a Thing Two - who get even with their parents with a different room - now as transmogrified and heavy-metallic as that cat!

You see, bored commercialism turns even kids into things. Without bona fide personhood.
***

But even now, all is not lost.

For the very God that turned us into Things (after we ate that Apple) now wants to give us a second chance:

In the Nativity of a Saviour.
***

This Christmas, kids, Don't wish for something you can't have.

Wish for what you CAN get...

Ordinary Saving Faith!

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Well what would you do if your mother asked you?

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ME WHILE READING THIS


ME AFTER READING


I swear I don't know why this made me laugh so freaking hard. I really don't. I mean the story was funny, the rhyming so fun, but it didn't warrant my hysterical outbursts. But I'm not surprised, I always find myself laughing inappropriately. For example;
n  MY FRIEND SWEARS THE THINGS RYAN SAYS IN THESE GIFS ARE EITHER CUTE OR HOT. PHILLIPE FROM CRUEL INTENTIONS IS HOTn




ME



OH STAHP.

I'm seriously starting to think it's a disorder.

But it did cross my mind, that the reason I find this funny is because I could relate to the story. Everyone can, I think. It reminded me of so many incidents during my childhood years when my mother would go out for a while, and I and my very spirited and fidgety brothers would turn the house into an amusement park. And then hours later when we realize our mother would be coming home anytime soon, enter us in flash mode trying to make reparations to fallen curtains, picking up everything we scattered around and chucking the rest into a cupboard whenever we ran out of cleaning time. I really liked this story, It's fun but a little bit sad that I'm only experiencing Dr. Seuss books now. I'm so going to read this to my kids someday.

#Dr.Seussbookbinge

There was no cat in my hat. I am severely disappointed.

I did the Cat in the Hat read-a-thon at children's party

Just reread this one really quickly for a readathon. I need to buy a copy of this book for my nephew who is going to be born within the next week or two :)

It all start so simply: Two children are moping indoors on a rainy day. Suddenly, in strolls the Cat in the Hat. Stylishly dressed in a candy-striped stovepipe hat and oversized bow tie, the cat soon creates a whirlwind of misbehavior that the kids are at first powerless to halt.

No child can resist this story and its inherent magic, for it embodies naughtiness and excitement beyond any child’s imagination.

Kids on their own? check
A stranger in the house? check
A talking cat? check
Trashing a house? double check
Fish in teapots? check
Oh how scandalous! ... and exactly what every child dreams about: Total chaos that resolves in their favor.

But for sure, the continuous success of this book is more than just the delightful naughtiness. It's the skillful nonsensical rhyme with a delicious rhythm that make it a delight to both read and read aloud, are integral part of why this book has become a classic. The invention, the pace, the wordage are also timeless and can't be topped.

Add to the mix Dr. Seuss magical and colorful illustrations and you have a hit warranty to make any child-and more than one adult-scream in delight.

Didn't like this book or the drawings. Found the story very predictable and it really didn't have a lasting story in it. Not for me.

"no! no!
make that cat go away!
tell that cat in the hat
you do NOT want to play.
he should not be here.
he should not be about.
he should not be here
when your mother is out!"

Well that was a pretty fast read lol.DR SEUSS I LOVE YOU!!

★ 4.5 stars
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[read with my little brother]
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i have bad & good memories when it comes to this book but it’s my favorite dr. seuss still to this day.

Murakami's windup bird left me quite sore
Oh no declared I shall read it no more!
Murakami's book was such great bore.
To the bookshop I took it,
I don't want this no more.
I don't care for Murakamis cat,
Not when there's...
Dr. SEUSS AND THE CAT IN THE HAT!

The Cat in the Hat descends upon two children one rainy day in this classic early reader from Dr. Seuss, setting off a madcap, messy adventure in their home. Despite the narrator and his sister Sally not being particularly keen to host this feline guest, the Cat barges in, determined to share his games with them. The children's fish offers a continual string of objections, but the Cat carries on, even going so far as to set loose his twin terrors - Thing One and Thing Two - who destroy the house. When the Cat finally leaves, and the children's mother is spotted approaching, it looks like there will be trouble, but that irrepressible feline has one last trick up his sleeve...

Originally published in 1957, The Cat in the Hat was Dr. Seuss's thirteenth children's book, and the first of his early readers. It works just as well as a read-aloud picture-book for younger children, but is intended for use with beginning readers, and is part of Random House's I Can Read It All By Myself Beginner Books collection, which includes all of the Dr. Seuss and Dr. Seuss-labeled early readers, amongst other titles. This is a book I recall reading many times as a girl, and its text and illustrations are immediately familiar, whenever I pick it up. This particular reread was prompted by my recently begun retrospective of Dr. Seuss's work, in which I will be reading and reviewing forty-four of his classic picture-books, in chronological publication order. This is a project I undertook as an act of personal protest against the suppression of six of the author/artist's titles - n  And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Streetn, n  McElligot's Pooln, n  If I Ran the Zoon, n  Scrambled Eggs Super!n, n  On Beyond Zebra!n and n  The Cat's Quizzern - by Dr. Seuss Enterprises, due to the outdated and potentially offensive elements that they contain. See my review of n  And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Streetn, to be found HERE, for a fuller exploration of my thoughts on that matter.

Although The Cat in the Hat is not currently one of the books being suppressed through the copyright holder's recent decision to cease publication, readers should note that it may only be a matter of time until it has joined that unfortunate list. Sadly, the censorious impulse - including, and perhaps especially, the self-censorious impulse, of which this recent decision is an example - only gains strength as it is fed, and this particular book has already run afoul of those same critics whose work seems to have informed Dr. Seuss Enterprises' recent action against the artistic and literary legacy that they are meant to be representing. Apparently the argument has been put forward, in such academic titles as Philip Nel's n  Was the Cat in the Hat Black?: The Hidden Racism of Children's Literature, and the Need for Diverse Booksn, that the titular Cat in this story is a descendant of the minstrel shows and blackface of earlier generations, and that his actions are a coded reflection of white fears about the disruptive nature of black power. I cannot comment upon Nel's argument, having not yet read the book - something I hope to do in the future - but some of the reviews of it that I have seen, reviews that mention all of the "decoding" done by the critic, in order to arrive at his conclusion, do make me wonder whether the text actually supports that conclusion, or whether the entire argument rests upon the imposition of the critic's own preexisting assumptions upon the text. I hope, at some point, to have an answer to that question, as well as a better understanding of the role of critics like Nel in this recent decision from Dr. Seuss Enterprises. Whatever the final argument put forward in his book, it is not my intention to assert that he can be held directly accountable for this act of censoriousness, simply by virtue of his having made a critique of Dr. Seuss' work. There is a difference, after all, between critique - even harsh critique - and calling for censorship. Of course, if Nel's book does indeed make an argument for suppressing books such as n  The Cat in the Hatn, or if Nel was one of the panel of "experts" Dr. Seuss Enterprises is said to have consulted, then that is a different matter, and some of the blame for this recent episode of cultural vandalism can indeed be laid at his feet.

However that may be, in light of the criticisms leveled against this book, I gave careful attention to the depiction of the Cat during my current reread, curious to see if I would spy some of the problematic aspects, whatever they might be. I cannot deny that there is an element of unease in this story, and that the Cat's role is indeed disruptive. This is something that I recall being conscious of, even as a child reader. Of course, my sense then was more that the Cat was being "naughty," and that the story represented the mischief children get up to, absent parental authority. After all, the narrator and his sister are home alone, very bored, with nowhere to go. Rereading as an adult, having only recently read or reread all of Dr. Seuss' prior children's books, I came to a similar but somewhat expanded conclusion. Namely, that this is a story which offers an interesting and slightly different take on the power of imaginative play, depicted in previous books as wondrous and somehow transformative, even if only temporarily. Here however, we see the potentially destructive, perhaps even dangerous potential of imagination, and the chaos attendant upon following one's impulses. It clearly isn't an accident that the Cat in the Hat arrives when the children's mother is out. He appears to represent a force that is oppositional to familial authority, whose spokesperson in the the story would be the lecturing fish, always reminding the children of what their mother might say or think. It's interesting to note that the chaos and destruction ushered in by the Cat is temporary, and that all is set to rights again, at the close of the book. This suggests nothing so much as the kind of experiments in independence that young people conduct, inching out a bit from the family circle, and then retreating again to its safety. I couldn't say whether this was intentional upon Dr. Seuss's part, but the fact that the book is deliberately aimed at a slightly older child than some of the earlier picture-books, a slightly older child just getting going with their own independent reading, it's tempting to think that the creator is offering them a story about wholly independent play.

Whatever interpretation the reader lands upon, when it comes to the meaning of the story and its creator's intentions, the experience of generations of children confirm that this is an immensely entertaining book. I can only hope that it will not be disappeared by our current climate of censoriousness, and that coming generations will also be able to enjoy its odd, disquieting charm.