Giggles and 'garble' of 'Cat in the Hat' hailed

By Wanda A. Adams
Advertiser Books Editor

Gov. Linda Lingle reads "The Cat in the Hat" to Wailea Iaukea, 6, of Honolulu, during a recent public reading at Hawai'i State Library. Rebecca Breyer • The Honolulu Advertiser Theodor Geisel Born 1904, died 1991 Writer and artist; produced 44 children's books, movie scripts, advertising pieces, an award-winning cartoon First children's book: "And To Think I Saw It On Mulberry Street," written on vacation in 1936, its poetic meter inspired by the rhythm of an ocean liner's engine The "Cat in the Hat" story: A Life magazine story on illiteracy prompted Geisel's publisher to send him a list of 400 words children should know and challenge him to put them in a story. Geisel cut the list down to 250 and wrote "Cat in the Hat" with 220. Honors: Pulitzer Prize, 1984; three Academy Awards Odd fact: Geisel coined the advertising phrase, "Quick, Henry, the Flit" for an insecticide spray.

If you think that was easy, try writing a parody of Dr. Seuss sometime. There a method to Theodor Seuss Geisel's madness that belies the simplicity of the poetry. Or perhaps it is the fact of its simplicity — he uses only 220 different words in the whole of "The Cat in the Hat" — that makes the Dr. Seuss trademark style so tricky to reproduce.

Universal Studios' movie version of the book due out tomorrow, we asked Hawai'i folks young and old what they thought of the book.

First, we went to a weekend reading at which Gov. Linda Lingle read "The Cat in the Hat" to an enthralled audience of young people.

Asked about the book afterward, all the children we talked to said the same thing: The cat was bad. And they liked that. (In case you need a plot line brush-up, the book is about a mischievous Cat in a striped Hat and two Things who visit two bored children stuck inside on a rainy day, make a monumental mess and then clean it up just as Mom comes up the pathway.)

Keonimana Kahooilihala, 5, of Manoa was among a number of children who liked it best when the cat was juggling the fish and about a dozen other things. Matthew Buck, 8, of Nu'uanu, enjoyed The Cat's cleaning machine.

In talking to adults, however, we noted two telling responses.

• Only one person of the two dozen or so adults we called had not read the book. (This woman, a well-known local celebrity who asked to be anonymous, blamed the underfunded library in her Honolulu elementary school for having set her back for all time in this regard.)
• Everyone returned our calls with alacrity, bubbling over with quotes, when they heard what we were calling about — and that doesn't happen to a reporter every day.

Writer Jana Wolff of Manoa, whose son, Ari, is 12-1/2 now and reading very well on his own, thank you, got teary-eyed thinking about the days when "The Cat in the Hat" was his favorite. And being a writer, she couldn't help herself: She dashed off a bit of doggerel before returning the call.

"On a couch near my son/ for a decade I sat,/ reading over and over/ 'The Cat in the Hat'/He called me Thing One/And I called him Thing Two/ Books and memories like that/ Are both cherished and few."

Honolulu Councilman Donovan Dela Cruz, although in his first term, surely by now is adept at ducking reporters' calls. But he was back to me on his cell within minutes. "I think that must have been the early version of 'Hooked on Phonics,' " he quipped. "It was so easy to remember because of the way it rhymed."

But it's not just the rhyme scheme, addictive as that is, that makes "The Cat in the Hat" one of the best-selling children's books of all time.

"It had characters that really stood out," said Dela Cruz. "It's ..." He paused, clearly thinking hard. "It's almost cultural. I think it's just American, you know what I mean?"

We do. And so does retired Big Island librarian Audrey Sato. "When that book first came out in 1957, it was a little bit controversial, you know, because the Cat is bad. Some teachers thought it would teach kids to be bad," she said. "But I kind of date the modern era in children's books to that one book, because it wasn't an old fairy tale from some other country, it wasn't a book that talked down or had this self-conscious moral. It got right with them where they were. Wait, I think the only way to tell you is to show you. ..."

Sato excused herself from the phone for a minute and came back with what she said was her original, battered read-aloud copy of "The Cat in the Hat" and proceeded to read it to me. (I am not making this up.) "See? I think this is a very American book, because in that part where the boy has to capture the naughty Things, it's about solving your own problems, being independent. Also, it ends with a question, 'What would you do?' It's asking, not telling."

"It's about a cat who wants to make stuff." May Chan, 7, Kane'ohe

"He likes to play but makes a big mess, so the two kids don't like it." Mahonry Hunter, 9, Nu'uanu

"He's so bad, it's just great!," said Mark Lutwak. "There's just something rascal about him. "

Lutwak is artistic director of Honolulu Theatre for Youth, which recently produced a two-part children's opera based on Dr. Seuss' "Green Eggs and Ham." He'd like to produce more Seuss-themed work, but the Geisel estate is "fierce," he says, about protecting the rights. Besides the "Green Eggs" work, there's literally nothing that a small theater like HTY can get its hands on.

Lutwak also appreciates the book from an artistic perspective: "You don't know this word as a kid, but Seuss' drawings are all kind of grotesque, and it really tickles your imagination."

Novelist Takashi Matsuoka of Honolulu (whose sequel to "Cloud of Sparrows" is at the publisher's now) recalled having to read "The Cat in the Hat" in secret. "My father (a journalist) detested what he considered Dr. Seuss' garbling of the English language. Dad thought it was especially dangerous for kids, who should be learning real words instead of phony ones,"

Matsuoka wrote in an e-mail. But the someday writer read Seuss' books anyway and later gave them to his daughter. "Both of us somehow manage to read and write English using most real words," Matsuoka commented drily.

Maui writer Deborah Iida loved Seuss for the very reason Matsuoka Sr. didn't care for him: "I have so much fun with Dr. Seuss, the way he can make a word out of no word and yet you know what he means. He's just brilliant to know how to do that. If the rest of us did that, no one would know what we were talking about." She read Seuss books to all of her three children and is keeping them around just in case she gets to carry this on to a new generation someday.

At 62, bookseller Brian Melzack of Bestsellers Books is enjoying having the opportunity to read Seuss again to his young family — two children under 26 months — although he finds it a bit exhausting. "My Mom and Dad used to be really theatrical, very animated when they read these books, and now I'm carrying on the tradition. But you read one of these things three times a night and you come away breathless."