Fifty years ago this March, Theodor Seuss Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss, published The Cat in the Hat. The little volume revolutionized children’s book publishing with its inventive silliness yet kid-appropriate vocabulary.
In honor of the event, the National Education Association is sponsoring a nationwide Read-Aloud of The Cat in the Hat on March 2 as part of its Read Across America program. They are encouraging people to read the book at 2:36 p.m. EST that day, in recognition of the 236 words Dr. Seuss used in the tale. Given that I think I have it memorized by now, that shouldn’t be too hard.
The book includes the protagonists’ mother, but not a father, making it appropriate for single and lesbian moms. Gay dads may, of course, feel that it is yet another example of children’s literature that excludes them. They can, of course, explain to their kids that it features a family different from their own, the same thing I do with books that feature opposite-sex families. It’s not that we won’t or shouldn’t read books about all kinds of families, LGBT and straight, or that Dr. Seuss should be blamed for being a product of his times. It’s just that when the overwhelming mass of children’s books ignores our families, it gets a little tiresome.
Regardless, I’m a huge fan of Dr. Seuss both because of the way he uses nonsense in the best Lewis Carroll tradition and because he manages to slip in social commentary without losing that edge of absurdity (think The Sneetches or Yertle the Turtle). I may even whip up a batch of green eggs and ham on March 2 to commemorate the day.