'The Cat In The Hat' is Published
Ted thought it would be a simple matter to turn out a book, but seven months and much throwing of the manuscript across the room [another "thinking cap" technique] later, the book was sent off to the publisher.
While it did not sell well at schools, it was a hit in the bookstores. The New York Herald literary review wrote: "We were afraid that the limitations Dr. Seuss put upon himself might have shackled his marvelous inventiveness. Quite the contrary. Restricting his vocabulary…and shortening the verse story has given a certain riotous unity…that is pleasing." Green Eggs and Ham had similar literary origins, with Ted's Random House editor and friend, Bennett Cerf, setting Ted another literary challenge, betting him $50 that he couldn't write a book using only fifty simple words. The success of these books led to Random House creating a whole new division of books. Ted was hired as the president of this new venture, called Beginner Books, whose logo was the Cat in the Hat.
“Why should [school primers] not have pictures that widen rather than narrow the associative richness the children give to the words they illustrate — drawings like those of the wonderfully imaginative geniuses among children’s illustrators, Tenniel, Howard Pyle, "Theodor S. Geisel".”
— John Hersey
