Children’s Hour: The Cat in the Hat

Children’s Hour is a feature posted every Thursday here at Lucybird’s Book Blog. Children’s Hour is my time for reviewing children’s picture books. In my job in a nursery I encounter lots of children’s books, and these are the books I use for Children’s Hour.

You can find links to past Children’s Hour posts here.

I’d love to hear everybody’s experiences of the books I review too, and feel free to post me a link to your own reviews, I’d love to make this a bit interactive.

The image (if you were wondering) is taken from Shirley’s Hughes’ Alfie and Annie-Rose books which I loved as a child.

Apparently there is some big (I think mainly American) thing about Dr. Seuss being required childhood reading, and just generally awesome. Sort of like Roald Dahl, but with more rhymes, and less ‘horror’. So it is with a little apology that I say I never liked Dr Seuss, even as a child. My sister got a few of them from the library but I just found them generally annoying, and pointless. Possibly because she liked Green Eggs and Ham which only has 50 different words in it.

Anyway I did my best to avoid Dr Seuss. Then The Cat in the Hat turned up in toddler room (possibly because my collegue, who works in preschool hates it- she may have sneaked it out). At first it was on the shelf, so I could avoid it, generally. However it has now somehow migrated into the book box. (Luckily) I have never actually got all the way through it, because it’s long for a nursery book, and you can never sit for that long without being interrupted, so I can only give a very basic storyline. The Cat in the Hat turns up at the house on a rainy day and tries to entertain the kids in silly, and, frankly, ill advised ways. Mother is not home, so he can basically do what he wants. (The less said about a mother leaving two young children at home with only a fish for supervision the better- it’s one of those thoughts you just have to suspend to read children’s books).

One of the children has wanted to read The Cat in the Hat every day this week, sometimes more than once. I can kind of see that maybe the pictures of the cat balancing everything are funny. I can see that the rhyming makes it nice to listen too, but I just find it annoying. One thing I can say I quite like is the pictures, although the Cat in the Hat doesn’t really look like a cat, does he?

If you must read a Seuss, and least make it “Oh the Places You’ll Go” which is still a little annoying, but at least has a nice message.

Buy The Cat in the Hat:

Paperback (£4.79)

Hardback (£10.89)