March 12, 1957: Dr. Seuss Publishes "The Cat In the Hat"

March 12, 1957: Dr. Seuss publishes The Cat in the Hat. It becomes a classic of children's literature.

Theodor Seuss Geisel was born on March 2, 1904 in Springfield, Massachusetts. He became an illustrator and cartoonist for magazines like Vanity Fair. He married twice, but never had children, and admitted that he didn't like children. But he became famous for writing and illustrating children's books, starting in 1937 with And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street.

After writing propaganda cartoons for the U.S. Army during World War II, he went back to children's writing. In 1955, he publishes Horton Hears a Who! He gave varying accounts of how he created The Cat in the Hat, but in the version he told most often, he was so frustrated with the word list from which he could choose words to write his story that he decided to scan the list and create a story based on the first two rhyming words he found. The words he found were cat and hat.

The story centers on a tall anthropomorphic cat, who wears a red and white-striped top hat and a red bow tie. The Cat shows up at the house of Sally and her brother one rainy day when their mother is away. Despite the repeated objections of the children's fish, the Cat shows the children a few of his tricks in an attempt to entertain them. In the process, he and his companions, Thing One and Thing Two, wreck the house. As the children and the fish become more alarmed, the Cat produces a machine that he uses to clean everything up and disappears just before the children's mother comes home.

The book was met with immediate critical and commercial success. Reviewers praised it as an exciting alternative to traditional primers. Three years after its debut, the book had already sold over a million copies, and in 2001, Publishers Weekly listed the book at number nine on its list of best-selling children's books of all time. In 1983, Geisel said, "It is the book I'm proudest of because it had something to do with the death of the Dick and Jane primers." 

It was followed by, among others, How the Grinch Stole Christmas! in 1957, Green Eggs and Ham in 1960, The Sneetches and Other Stories in 1961, and The Lorax in 1971. Many of his stories were animated for television. In 1971, The Cat in the Hat became an animated TV special, with comedian Allan Sherman voicing the Cat.

Geisel died on September 24, 1991, at the age of 87. In 2003, a live-action version of The Cat in the Hat was produced, starring Mike Myers. The film tanked, and Audrey Geisel, Seuss' widow, decided not to allow any further live-action adaptations of his work.

In a 2011 episode of the YouTube series Epic Rap Battles of History, guest performer Mickey Meyer played Dr. Seuss, "Nice" Peter Shukoff played the Cat in the Hat, and "Epic" Lloyd Ahlquist played Thing 1 and Thing 2, against guest performer George Watsky as William Shakespeare. This was the 1st time the series had 2 guest stars opposing each other, although Meyer as Seuss did not speak.

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March 12, 1957 was a Tuesday. Baseball was in Spring Training. Football was out of season. There was 1 game played in the NBA: The Minneapolis Lakers beat the Philadelphia Warriors, 100-94 at the Minneapolis Auditorium. And there was 1 game played in the NL: The Detroit Red Wings beat the Chicago Black Hawks, 4-3 at the Chicago Stadium.

Marlon Jackson, of the singing Jackson siblings, was born on this day. So was Val Demings, who served as a Democratic Congresswoman from Florida.