A new life for the 'Cat in the Hat'

Fifty years ago this spring, Theodor (Ted) Geisel -- better known to his readers as Dr. Seuss -- published his 10th book for children, "The Cat in the Hat." Priced at $2 (later reduced to $1.95), it was an instant success: Within a year, Random House had sold more than 200,000 copies, and by the end of 1960, it had sold nearly a million copies. Three years after it was published, the book had been translated into French, Chinese, Swedish and Braille. Since then, it's been issued in a dozen more languages. Seuss died at his home in La Jolla in 1991. This month, Random House is bringing out "The Annotated Cat," with page-by-page notes by Philip Nel, an associate professor of English at Kansas State University. Below are two of Seuss' original sketches for pages in the book, as well as portions of Nel's annotation for those pages.

January 28, 2007