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Table of Contents
Synopsis .....................................................................................................................................................
State Learning Standards ...................................................................................................................
A Thing or Two About Dr. Seuss ......................................................................................................
A Chat with Mickey Rowe, Physical Performer .........................................................................
About the Set and Costumes .............................................................................................................
Making Super Stories like Dr. Seuss ...............................................................................................
Rain or Shine – Activities for the Classroom or Home ...........................................................
What Would You Do? The Moral Message of The Cat in The Hat ......................................
Why Johnny Can Read: Dr. Seuss and Literacy ..........................................................................
Words & Phrases That Might Be New to You .............................................................................
Jump Start – Give This a Try ..............................................................................................................
Drama in Action – Learn by Doing .................................................................................................
Activity Pages ..........................................................................................................................................
Booklist ......................................................................................................................................................
Share Your Thoughts ............................................................................................................................
2
3
4-5
6-7
8-9
10-12
13
14-15
16-17
18-19
20
21
22
23-24
25
26
SYNOPSIS
Be warned: This is a complete synopsis of the play, so it is full of spoilers.
Sally and her brother, beyond bored, stare out from their house at
a cold, wet day. With their mother gone and nothing planned, a dull
day looms large. Things take a dramatic turn when the Cat in the Hat
swoops in, promising the kids good games to play. Their pet Fish,
however, insists that the Cat, no matter what he promises, should not be
in the house while their mother is out.
To prove his tricks are good fun, the Cat balances Fish, still in his bowl,
atop an umbrella. Then the Cat constructs a tall tower of balancing objects,
adding a book, teacup, cake and rake to his act, and begins hopping on top
of a ball. Of course the tower and Cat come crashing down. The children
watch the disaster unfold in slow motion. Fish is fine, but his protests grow
more insistent.
A whole new level of chaos erupts when the Cat
brings in a large red wooden crate. He opens
the box, and Thing One and Thing Two run out, wearing red suits
and topped with wild blue hair. They politely shake hands with Sally
and her brother, and then explode into action. The children are not
sure what to do. The Things pull out kites and fly them down the hall,
knocking over pictures on the wall. They rampage around the house,
spreading mayhem through the bedrooms and back again, making big
bumps and thumps and doing “all kinds of bad tricks.”
They have thrown the home into unbelievable disarray when Fish, shaking with fear, sees a
glimpse of Mother returning home. The boy quickly takes charge. He captures the acrobatic
Things with nets and insists that Cat box them up and take them away. The Cat does as he is
told; he locks up the box and leaves with a sad smile, but the trail of ruin remains. Sally and her
brother don’t know what to do. Some tense moments pass. Then the Cat re-appears driving his
extraordinary picking-up machine and promising to
clean everything up. Using the machine’s mechanical
hands, Cat puts back the cake, the rake, the gown, the
milk, strings, dishes, fan, cup, ship and finally, the Fish.
Then the Cat leaves with a tip of his hat. It’s unbelievable
but true: he has returned the house almost completely to
its original order. The siblings replace a few chairs, put
away a ball. They sit back down quickly in their window
seats. It appears as if they’ve never moved. Their mother
enters and doesn’t suspect a thing. But what answer will
she get when she asks about their day?
3
WASHINGTON STATE LEARNING STANDARDS
Dr. Seuss’ The Cat in the Hat touches on many themes and ideas. Here are a few we believe would
make good Discussion Topics: Creativity, Curiosity and Responsibility.
We believe that seeing the show and using our Active Audience Guide can help you meet the
following State Standards and address these 21st-Century Skills:
• Growth Mindset
• Perseverance
• Creative Thinking
• Critical Thinking
• Communication
• Collaboration
WASHINGTON STATE K-12 LEARNING STANDARDS
Theatre
Science
1. The student understands and applies arts knowledge and skills.
1.1 Understands arts concepts and vocabulary.
1.2 Applies, experiences and practices basic arts skills and techniques.
1.4 Understands and applies audience conventions in a variety of settings and performances of
theatre.
2. The student uses the artistic process of responding to performance to demonstrate thinking skills.
2.3 Applies a responding process to an arts performance.
3. The student communicates through the arts (dance, music, theatre and visual arts).
3.1 Uses theatre to express feelings and present ideas.
3.2 Uses the arts to communicate for a specific purpose in dance, music, theatre, and visual arts.
4. The student makes connections with and across the arts to other disciplines, life, cultures and work.
4.3 Understands how the arts impact and reflect personal choices throughout life.
4.5 Understands how arts knowledge and skills are used in the world of work, including careers in
the arts.
EALR 2 – Inquiry
2.1 Making Observations: Answer questions by explaining observations of the natural world.
COMMON CORE STATE STANDARDS
Exact standards depend upon grade level, selected text(s), and instructional shifts to meet the standard.
English Language Arts
Reading:
Literature
Reading:
Foundational
Skills
Writing
Speaking &
Listening
CCSS.ELA - RL.1 With prompting and support, ask and answer questions about key details in a text.
CCSS.ELA - RL.3 With prompting and support, identify characters, settings, and major events in a story.
CCSS.ELA - RL.4 Ask and answer questions about unknown words in a text.
CCSS.ELA - RL.5 Recognize common types of texts (e.g. storybooks, poems).
CCSS.ELA - RL.10 Actively engage in group reading activities with purpose and understanding.
CCSS.ELA - RF.2 Demonstrate understanding of spoken words, syllables, and sounds (phonemes).
CCSS.ELA - RF.2A Recognize and produce rhyming words.
CCSS.ELA - RF.3 Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words.
CCSS.ELA - RF.3D Distinguish between similarly spelled words by identifying the sounds of the
letters that differ.
CCSS.ELA - W.3 Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to narrate a single event
or several loosely linked events, tell about the events in the order in which they
occurred, and provide a reaction to what happened.
CCSS. ELA - SL.2 Confirm understanding of a text read aloud or information presented orally or
through other media by asking and answering questions about key details.
4
WHAT IS ARTS INTEGRATION?
A definition and checklist from The Kennedy Center’s
Changing Education Through the Arts program.
Arts integration is an approach to teaching in which students construct and demonstrate
understanding through an art form. Students engage in a creative process which connects an
art form and another subject area and meets evolving objectives in both.
Some educators confuse any effort to include the arts in their classroom with arts integration.
While all types of arts-based instruction are encouraged, it is helpful for educators to know when
they are engaged in arts integration. To achieve this awareness, an Arts Integration Checklist
is provided. Educators answering “yes” to the items in the Checklist can be assured that their
approach to teaching is indeed integrated.
Approach to Teaching
• Are learning principles of Constructivism (actively built, experiential, evolving,
collaborative, problem-solving, and reflective) evident in my lesson?
Understanding
• Are the students engaged in constructing and demonstrating understanding as opposed to
just memorizing and reciting knowledge?
Art Form
• Are the students constructing and demonstrating their understandings through an art form?
Creative Process
• Are the students engaged in a process of creating something original as opposed to
copying or parroting?
• Will the students revise their products?
Connects
• Does the art form connect to another part of the curriculum or a concern/need?
• Is the connection mutually reinforcing?
Evolving Objectives
• Are there objectives in both the art form and another part of the curriculum or a concern/need?
• Have the objectives evolved since the last time the students engaged with this subject matter?
For more thoughts about this subject and a wealth of useful information
(including lesson plans) go to: The Kennedy Center ArtsEdge
5
A THING OR TWO ABOUT DR. SEUSS
• Theodor “Ted” Seuss Geisel, better known to the world
as the beloved Dr. Seuss, was born in 1904 on Howard
Street in Springfield, Massachusetts.
• His mother, Henrietta Seuss Geisel, had worked in her
father’s bakery before marrying Ted’s father, often
memorizing the names of the pies that were on special
each day and “chanting” them to her customers—“Apple,
mince, lemon – peach, apricot, pineapple – blueberry,
coconut, custard and squash!” If Ted had difficulty
getting to sleep, she would sing him her “pie-selling
chants” and read bedtime stories to him with the same
rhythm. As an adult, Ted credited his mother with both
his ability and desire to create the rhymes for which he
became so well known.
• His father owned a brewery until the onset of Prohibition, a time in the 1920s when buying
and selling alcohol was made illegal. Ted’s father then took a job as superintendent of city
parks, which included the local zoo. There, young Ted spent many days drawing the animals
and eventually developing his own unique style. Though Ted would later gain fame because of
his unique artistic style, he never once had an art lesson.
• When he was 14 years old, Ted collected tinfoil for the World War I war effort, planted potatoes in
a two-acre victory garden (which he forgot to harvest) and was among the top ten Boy Scouts in
Springfield in selling United States Liberty Bonds. Ted stood on the stage for a ceremony with the
other nine boys to receive an award from Colonel Theodore Roosevelt. Ted was last in line. When
Roosevelt reached for the tenth award, it was not there. Someone had counted wrong. “What’s
this little boy doing here?” Roosevelt thundered, and instead of explaining things the scoutmaster
speedily escorted Ted from the stage. Although he had never experienced it before, Ted developed
terrible stage fright and from that time on was horribly shy of public appearances.
• Dr. Seuss was not a doctor, although Ted did consider pursuing a Ph.D. in English. After graduating
from Dartmouth, he went to Oxford University in London, where he studied literature. Though
his Oxford notebooks include some notes on the lectures, they reveal a much greater love for
doodling. One day after class, his classmate Helen Palmer (who would become his first wife)
looked over at his notebook. “You’re crazy to be a professor. What you really want to do is draw,”
she told him. “That’s a very fine flying cow!” Ted realized that Helen was right. He really did want
to draw. So, he left higher education, returned to the U.S. and became a cartoonist.
• As a magazine cartoonist, Ted began signing his work under the name of “Dr. Theophrastus
Seuss.” (Theophrastus was the name of the toy stuffed dog he’d had since he was a little boy
and that he kept with him all through his life.) He later shortened that to “Dr. Seuss.” And
that’s how Ted Geisel became Dr. Seuss. He also has written books under the name Theo
LeSieg—Geisel spelled backwards.
Continued on the next page...
6
• Even though most people pronounce his name Soose (like it rhymes
with goose) the Seuss in his real middle name is pronounced Zoice
(like it rhymes with voice).
• Dr. Seuss worked as a writer and cartoonist at various magazines
before being hired to draw ads for a pesticide company. He drew
nasty looking bugs for 15 years.
• It was when Dr. Seuss was returning to the U.S. from a European vacation, by boat, that he
wrote his first children’s book. His boredom on the long trip inspired him to write a poem
to the rhythm of the ship’s engine. The result was the book And to Think That I Saw It on
Mulberry Street, which was rejected, depending on the version of the story he told, by either
20, 26, 27, 28, or 29 publishers. The book was finally published and became a hit. But Dr.
Seuss didn’t become a household name until he wrote The Cat in the Hat in 1957.
• Ted’s memories of Springfield can be seen throughout his work. Drawings of Horton the
Elephant meandering along streams in the Jungle of Nool, for example, mirror the waterways
in Springfield’s Forest Park. And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street is not only named
after a real street, it is filled with Springfield imagery, including a look-alike of Mayor Fordis
Parker on the reviewing stand, and police officers riding red motorcycles, the traditional color
of Springfield’s famed Indian Motorcycles.
• Geisel had no children of his own. When asked how he was able to write so well for children
when he didn’t have any he said, “You make ‘em, I amuse ‘em.”
• Dr. Seuss claimed his ideas started with doodles: “I may doodle a couple of animals; if they
bite each other, it’s going to be a good book.”
• Dr. Seuss’s birthday, March 2nd, has been chosen as Read Across
America Day by the National Education Association (NEA). Each
year it’s a day for kids, students and teachers to focus on reading
and how important and entertaining it can be.
• Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1984 and three Academy Awards,
Seuss was the author and illustrator of 44 children’s books, some of
which have been made into animated television specials and films for
children of all ages. Even after his death in 1991, Dr. Seuss continues
to be the best-selling author of children’s books in the world.
SOURCES:
Seussville: Explore Dr. Seuss’ Studio
Dr. Seuss National Memorial Sculpture Garden at the Springfield Museums: All About Dr. Seuss
Encyclopedia of World Biography: Theodor Geisel Biography
Kidzworld: Dr. Seuss Biography
7
A CHAT WITH MICKEY ROWE,
PHYSICAL PERFORMER
Please tell us a little bit about your working process.
As a physical performer I am an actor just like any other, but
I have some extra “tools” in my tool box. In addition to using
my voice, heart and body, I also have some fun toys and special
skills to help me tell stories. I ride a unicycle. I can juggle objects,
watching them fly through the air, three or even four at a time. I
spin plates on sticks and use magic tricks. I often walk on stilts
which can make me 9 feet tall! These are called “circus skills,”
because—you guessed it—they are performed in circuses.
My job is to use all of my special skills, as well as an actor’s
usual ones, to tell the story that you are going to watch and
make it come alive for the audience. I hope to use them to help you feel surprised and make
the performance feel even more real and live in front of you.
One of the things about theater that is different from watching a movie, TV show or YouTube
video is that in theater what you are seeing is happening right in front of you. It’s live, and
anything could happen. I like to think that circus skills or things that seem difficult can help
heighten the “live-ness” of theater. A lot of things that happen in a play or movie are “pretend,”
but most of the physical things an actor might do onstage, like juggling objects, unicycling, stiltwalking, or diving and tumbling aren’t pretend. These big not-pretend things can help remind
the audience that the actors on stage are real people, right in front of them, breathing the same
air they are, which makes the characters more real as well.
What is a particularly interesting or unusual challenge on this project and how are you setting
out to solve it?
There are so many fun challenges playing Thing 1. How can I pick just one? I’ll tell you about
three of them.
At one point in the show the two Things break the boy’s bicycle. Since we do the show 11 times
a week, we couldn’t actually break the bicycle every single show, so instead the brilliant painters,
who paint the set and all of the props painted my unicycle to look like the boy’s bicycle after
it had been all broken. They did such a good job at painting my unicycle that when I ride off
stage on the bike and you hear a loud CRASH-BOOM-BUMP and then I ride back on stage on the
unicycle, the audience thinks it’s the bicycle broken apart.
Continued on the next page...
8
Another challenge with this show is that Adria LaMorticella and I play the Things and the Cat’s
assistant Kittens, too. At the end of the show Thing 1 and Thing 2 leave the stage and about
30 seconds later the Kittens come back on the stage to clean up the Things’ mess. When this
happens we have to run as fast as we can backstage from one side of the stage to the other while
taking off our wigs and shoes. We have an incredibly talented dresser who helps us change our
costumes as fast as we can and draws our whiskers on really quickly so that we can come back
on stage looking like completely different characters.
The final fun challenge is at one point in the show I dive over Adria and land in a somersault.
This is really fun in rehearsal, but to do this for 11 shows a week for over a month I had to have
the costume makers sew a little pillow into the back of my pants so that I don’t get a bruise on
my bottom from somersaulting so much. Because there’s nothing worse than a numb bum.
What in your childhood got you to where you are today?
The reason I love theater and do it for my living now is that when I was in elementary school my
grandmother got a subscription to Seattle Children’s Theatre and took me to see all of the shows.
I fell in love. One of my first memories of theater is watching Jack and the Beanstalk at SCT and
seeing the Giant played by an enormous puppet that an amazing man named Doug Paasch made.
When I got older I took classes through the SCT Drama
School and those classes taught me how to learn what I
needed to learn to start an actual career in the theater.
As for my special circus skills, when I was very little I saw
dancing stilt-walkers on Sesame Street and was obsessed
with stilt-walkers and circus skills from then on. My
dad helped me to make some stilts in the garage, and I
practiced every day in my back yard. When I was in third
grade I started stilt-walking at festivals.
Mickey Rowe has been seen at Seattle Children’s Theatre,
Seattle Opera, Seattle Shakespeare Company, Book-It
Repertory Theatre, The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center,
Ashland New Plays Festival, Washington Ensemble
Theatre, with OSF Presents, and at the Edinburgh Festival
Fringe. Mickey is also Artistic Director of Arts on the
Waterfront, a theater/philanthropy company working
with Homeless Teen Artists, The Trevor Project, The City of
Seattle and Teen Feed.
9
ABOUT THE SET
The set and costume designs for Dr. Seuss’ The Cat in the Hat are happening in an unusual
way. Normally, our directors work with designers to create the look of a show, but part
of what SCT got when we agreed to do this script, which was originally performed at the
National Theatre in London, is the chance to use their designs. The designs look so much
like what Dr. Seuss drew that
they are exactly right for
the show. We get a package
with pictures from Dr.
Seuss’s book, photographs
of the original production
and drawings of the set and
costumes. We will use that
information to build them in
our scene and costume shops.
Because the design comes
from a theater company in
Britain, the numbers you
see on the sketches are
measurements in metric
notation—in millimeters.
Good thing, because a house
that was 2548 feet wide
would be way too big to fit in
our theater.
If you look closely at the
costumes in the photographs
you’ll see that they not only
look like the shape of the
clothes in the book, they also
have been painted in places
with markings that match the
lines in the drawings.
Boy’s costume. Notice the marks that
look like pencil lines.
Continued on the next page...
10
Sally’s skirt has the same kind of marks
as Boy’s costume
Set model of the house exterior
House exterior as seen in Seuss’s book
Technical drawing of the house exterior
It is easy to use the book to make some of the set pieces, like the front of the house. It is a flat
object, just like the drawing in the book is a flat picture so it can be drawn and built pretty much
the same way.
Continued on the next page...
11
The picking-up machine as seen in the book and in the National Theatre’s
production. The extra people you see dressed as cats are puppeteers who help
drive the machine and clean up the mess.
Some of the other pieces are much harder to make. The picking-up machine is only seen twice in
the book—once from the right side, and the other time you can see part of the back. In the play
it needs to be 3D. The Cat needs to ride on it and it has to actually pick things up. The designer
had to imagine what it would look like from both sides and even from above so that people could
figure out how to actually build such a crazy machine.
12
Technical drawings
of the picking-up machine
MAKING SUPER STORIES LIKE DR. SEUSS
Dr. Seuss can tell the craziest stories but they still remind you of how you feel about things in
your real life. A giant cat in a striped hat might never have come knocking on your door, but you
know what it’s like to make a mess you might not be able to clean up before your mother sees
it. You probably will never be asked to eat green eggs and ham, but what is this broccoli stuff
everyone wants you to try? And an elephant is not likely to carry you around on a flower, but you
know what it’s like when people won’t listen to what you have to say.
Dr. Seuss knows that to tell a good story you need to help readers understand the characters in it
and what they are feeling and doing. He doesn’t only use words to do it. His pictures tell a lot, too.
Let’s take a look at some of the elements that help make a good story.
Who’s in the story?
Stories need a hero, but it doesn’t have to be someone who wears a cape and can fly through the air. It
can simply be someone who is trying to be a good person and do what’s right. But if the hero is able to
do what they want too easily, that’s not much of a story. It would be like playing games by yourself all the
time—there aren’t any surprises and you always know who is going to win. That’s why the story needs
someone who is trying to keep the hero from her goal. You can call him the bad guy or the villain, but he
doesn’t have to be evil. He just needs to be doing something that is a problem for the hero.
Who do you think is the hero of The Cat in The Hat? Who is the villain?
Where does the story happen?
Every story has to take place somewhere. It doesn’t have to be in a place that’s exactly like
where you live. There are some very exciting stories that happen under the sea or on a different
planet. But even a strange place can be something like one you know. That can help you better
understand the story and the people in it.
Where do Sally and her brother live? How is it like where you live? How is it different?
What happens in the story?
This is probably the most fun part. Anything you want can be in a story. The best stories, like
The Cat in the Hat, take you on a trip with a beginning, a middle and an end. The beginning often
starts with the normal life of the people in the story. In the middle something happens that
changes things for them. What happens to them is so important that they have to do something
about it. In the end you find out how the changes turn out for everyone.
What are the beginning, middle and end of The Cat in the Hat? What would happen in the end of
the story if the middle changed?
You can take all these parts and use them to make any story you want. You can write it, or draw
it, or act it out. Or all three! What will make all these parts into a great story? Your imagination.
13
RAIN OR SHINE –
ACTIVITIES FOR THE CLASSROOM OR HOME
Whether it’s raining or not, you can have fun with these activities that are all about rain. You
don’t even need to wait for the Cat in the Hat to show up.
Making Rain
You can create a little indoor rain in a jar.
What You Need:
• Large clear jar with a wide mouth
• Hot water
• Food coloring
• Ice cubes on a small plate
Put a small amount of hot water in the jar. Add a drop of food coloring if you like.
Put the plate of ice cubes on top of the jar. Let it sit for a minute.
You will be able to see moisture forming on the bottom of the plate and then you’ll see the
moisture drip down like rain. Rain happens when warm, moist air rises up and hits colder air
above it.
Singing in the Rain
Dress up in rain gear—raincoat, hat and boots. Umbrellas
are great to use, too. Pretend it’s raining inside and there are
puddles to play in. Sing, twirl umbrellas, splash in puddles and
use your imagination to celebrate the rain any way you like.
You might want to watch this clip of Gene Kelly dancing in the
movie Singin’ in the Rain to get some ideas of how much fun
you can have enjoying the rain.
YouTube: Singing in the Rain
Drops of Rain Picture
Let the rain add its own style to your art.
Cover a work surface with newspaper. Take washable markers and draw a picture of flowers
or trees or anything that needs rain to live and grow. Take an eyedropper filled with water
and squeeze a drop of water onto the picture. Squeeze out more drops in more places on the
drawing. The colors will run and the drawings will change into something new and interesting.
Continued on the next page...
14
A Simple Rain Gauge
At times it seems like it’s raining hard enough to fill the ocean. Find out
how much is coming down.
What You Need:
• Glass jar
• Permanent marker
• Ruler
Place the ruler against the side of the glass jar and use the marker to
make a line every half-inch from the bottom of the glass to the top.
Decorate the rain gauge however you like. You can draw designs, add ribbons or just leave it
the way it is.
Place the rain gauge outside under the open sky to collect the rainfall.
When it stops raining, take a look at the gauge and see how much rain really fell.
A Milk Rainbow?
When the rain finally stops and the sun comes out, sometimes
we’re lucky enough to see a rainbow. Until then, try this.
What You Need:
• Red, blue and yellow food coloring
• 1 cup milk
• Dish soap
• Shallow bowl
Pour the milk into the bowl. Add one drop of red, blue and yellow food coloring near the center
of the bowl. Squeeze a drop of dish soap into the center of the bowl. Don’t stir the milk or shake
the bowl.
The dish soap does not mix with the milk. Instead it floats on top and spreads over the surface.
As it spreads, it grabs the food color. Where the colors meet, they combine to form all the colors
of the rainbow. This isn’t the way a real rainbow happens, of course, but at least you get to see
the colors even though there’s no sunshine.
See this experiment here – Kidzone: Catch a Rainbow
15
WHAT WOULD YOU DO?
THE MORAL MESSAGE OF THE CAT IN THE HAT
The Cat in the Hat has no moral, in the Aesop’s Fable sense of the word. Just about everything that
everyone does in The Cat in the Hat would clearly be off limits in real life, starting with using a
talking goldfish as an all-day babysitter. The Cat comes, the Cat wreaks fun havoc, the Cat cleans up
and goes away, leaving no trace of his presence. Except, as the nameless narrating boy relates:
...our mother came in
And she said to us two
“Did you have any fun?
Tell me. What did you do?”
The Cat has cleaned up the physical mess he made, but has left
a moral mess behind: what should Sally and her brother do?
One mother tells a story about this moment in the book.
My daughter always looks up at me and says, “I would tell you.” But I don’t believe her. I think
it’s quite possible that the Cat in the Hat has already been here, and she’s just telling me what
I want to hear.
Of course, in real life any mother would want to know if an intruder had come into her house
while her children were there alone, however fun he seemed to be and however neatly he picked
up after himself. It would also be a very, very good idea for those children to tell her about it. But
The Cat in the Hat, clearly a wacky fantasy, lets us think about things in a fun way that we will, at
many times in our life, have to think about very seriously indeed.
According to Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory of moral development, how the children think about
answering their mother’s question will give insight into how far along they are on the stages of
moral development. There are three main levels:
1. Self-interest – what’s in it for me? At this level, individuals try to get what they want and avoid
punishment. In some ways, the fish-in-the-pot embodies this attitude. As he sees the Mother
approaching, he shrieks:
“Look! Look!”
And our fish shook with fear.
“Your mother is on her way home!
Do you hear?
Oh, what will she do to us?
What will she say?
Oh, she will not like it
To find us this way!”
Continued on the next page...
16
The Fish in the Pot – doing his best
in a difficult situation
At this stage of moral development, the children might decide to conceal the truth because the
Cat has removed all the evidence—they can avoid punishment, and hope the Cat will come back
for more fun. Or, they might decide to reveal the Cat’s antics because they are frightened of what
the Cat might do if he does return.
2. Conventional Morality – what are the rules? At times, the fish-in-the-pot embodies this sort of
reasoning as well, shrieking at the Cat:
“You SHOULD NOT be here
When our mother is not.
You get out of this house!”
Said the fish in the pot.
If the children are at this stage of moral development,
the children might tell their mother the truth about the
Cat if they believe they have broken a rule and should
be disciplined for doing so. On the other hand, if they
have NOT been given a specific rule to the contrary (from
somebody with more status than a goldfish) they might
feel under no obligation to reveal the recent presence of
the mischievous Cat.
3. Post-Conventional Morality – This stage involves
Pyramid illustrating Kohlberg’s six stages of moral
understanding that compromise between competing
reasoning. From the bottom up, each two stages can
be combined to make a total of three levels: 1) trying
points of view is necessary for society to function. It also
to get what you want; 2) trying to think and act as
involves being able to see the world from another’s point
you have been taught to; and 3) trying to determine
for yourself what right and wrong means.
of view while upholding universal ethical principles.
What would the Mother do in their shoes, and why? Many
psychologists, including Kohlberg, doubted that many people could consistently achieve the
highest level of moral development. It does seem daunting, and perhaps beyond the range of the
fish-in-the-pot, but Dr. Seuss understood how important it is to see from another’s point of view.
His final question points us out of the book in the direction of empathy.
What would you do?
If your mother asked you?
SOURCES:
The New Yorker: Cat People - What Dr. Seuss really taught us
Wikipedia: Lawrence Kohlberg’s stages of moral development
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WHY JOHNNY CAN READ: DR. SEUSS AND LITERACY
The more that you read the more you will know
The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.
– Dr. Seuss, in I Can Read with My Eyes Shut!
Dr. Seuss, as usual, got it right. Reading and
opportunity go hand in hand. But during the
1950s people in the United States worried that
fewer of their children were learning. Why
Can’t Johnny Read? asked the title of a famous
book by Rudolf Flesch. In 1940, 2.9 percent of
Americans 14 years and older couldn’t read.
In 1950 that number had actually increased,
to 3.2 percent. Not a big jump, but for the first
time in U.S. history a larger percentage of the
population was illiterate. Why?
John Hersey, writing in LIFE magazine in
Dick and Jane readers from the 1950s featured stilted writing and
1954, blamed the Dick and Jane books that
artificially idealized characters.
schools used to teach children to read. He
wrote that they featured, “insipid illustrations depicting the slickedup lives of…abnormally courteous, unnaturally clean boys and girls”
and asked, “Why should (school books) not have drawings like those
of the wonderfully imaginative geniuses among children’s illustrators,
Tenniel, Howard Pyle, Seuss, Walt Disney?”
In 1954, when Hersey wrote his article, Seuss was the least-known
name on that list, although Theodor “Ted” Seuss Geisel, writing
under the pen name Dr. Seuss, had already produced some successful
children’s books, including Horton Hatches an Egg and If I Ran the
Zoo. Ted Geisel had a love for rhythm and rhyme—the sound as well
as the sense of words—which he absorbed from his family. All his
grandparents came from Germany; he grew up speaking German as
well as English. His mother, Henrietta Seuss Geisel, would often chant him to sleep, using rhymes
remembered from when she was a girl. Wordplay filled Ted’s youth. The family’s beer brewery,
Kalmbach and Geisel, was nicknamed Come Back and Guzzle. His sister Margaretha called herself
Marnie Mecca Ding Ding Guy. Ted’s family also nurtured his talent for drawing. Theodor Robert
Geisel, Ted’s father, managed a zoo, and Ted drew pictures that transformed the zoo animals. His
mother loved the “Wynnmph,” with ears nine feet long, that Ted drew on the wall of their house.
Ted Geisel took the hint in Hersey’s article seriously, and met with William Spaulding, a children’s
book editor, who challenged him to “write me a story that first-graders can’t put down.” Spaulding
Continued on the next page...
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gave him a list of 348 simple words, and insisted that the book use
only 225 of them. Ted thought writing a book with only 225 words
would be easy. It wasn’t. Sometimes he got so frustrated that he
threw his manuscript across the room.
Peter Newell’s The Hole Book was Dr.
Seuss’s favorite children’s book when
he was a child. Like his own work, it
features rhyme and wacky humor.
It took him nine months to produce The Cat in the Hat. And he
didn’t quite succeed in meeting Spaulding’s challenge. He used 223
of the words that were on Spaulding’s list, but 13 that were not.
And the Cat did not replace Dick and Jane; schools found his antics
too subversive, and continued to use the old-style readers for many
more years.
However, when The Cat in the Hat came out in bookstores in 1957,
it made a huge hit with the public. By 1960 it had sold nearly a
million copies. It has remained just as popular ever since. In 2009
The Cat in the Hat sold 452,258 copies.
Ted Geisel cared deeply about literacy. That concern motivated his work, and also his support
of the psychology professor Terry Cronan. She developed a literacy program using AfricanAmerican and Hispanic students as tutors. The tutors brought Seuss books to low-income
families, and helped them build a bookcase in which to keep them. Dr. Cronan favored Seuss
books because of their rhythm and repetition and because the characters are universal—not
defined by an ethnic background.
As Dr. Seuss books became popular, literacy began to rise again. In 1979, the illiteracy rate in the
United States was less than a fifth of what it was in 1950. Literacy among African Americans and
other ethnic minorities rose even more quickly. Was Dr. Seuss responsible? Difficult to say, with so
many other factors at work. But are his books effective tools to promote literacy? Without a doubt.
Generations of children have been lured into a love of books by Dr. Seuss. We know today that poetry
and the rhythm of language plays an important role in learning to read. Very young children who
cannot recite a nursery rhyme are more likely to have trouble with reading in the future. And “shared
reading” in which adult caregivers read to and with young children also plays a crucial role. So the
fact that Dr. Seuss appeals to adults as well as children helps make them even more useful literacy
tools. And literacy is crucial to success, to feeling that, as Dr. Seuss wrote in Oh, the Places You’ll Go:
You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself any direction you choose.
You’re on your own. And you know what you know.
And YOU are the one who’ll decide where to go.
SOURCES:
National Center for Biotechnology Information: The more you read, the more you know
The Royal Children’s Hospital: Literacy in Early Childhood
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WORDS & PHRASES THAT MIGHT BE NEW TO YOU
And we did not like it.
Not one little bit. – not at all
We looked!
Then we saw him step in on the mat! – doormat
“A lot of good tricks.
I will show them to you.
Your mother
Will not mind at all if I do.”
tricks – skills, like juggling and balancing
mind – care
“Now! Now! Have no fear.
Have no fear!” said the cat.
Now! Now! – calm down
Have no fear – don’t be afraid
“Put me down!” said the fish.
“I do not wish to fall!” – want
I can fan with the fan
As I hop on the ball!
But that is not all. – I can do more
They should not be here
When your mother is not!
Put them out! Put them out! – make them leave
They are tame. Oh, so tame! – harmless
Then Sally and I
Saw them run down the hall. – through the corridor
So, as fast as I could,
I went after my net. – went to get
One phrase gets used in two slightly different ways:
Then he got up on top
With a tip of his hat. – lifting his hat as a “hello”
And then he was gone
With a tip of his hat. – lifting his hat as a “good-bye”
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JUMP START
Ideas for things to do, wonder about, talk about or write about, before or after you see
Dr. Seuss’ The Cat in the Hat.
What do you do for fun when you’re stuck inside on a rainy day?
Invent an umbrella that does something special. Draw it.
Balance an imaginary beach ball on your hand, a teacup on your toe, and three books on your head, all
at the same time. Drop them all in a very dramatic way, then balance three new imaginary things on
different parts of your body. Drop them in a very funny way.
A talking fish is pretty cool. What talking animal would you like to have living in your home?
Make a kite. Go fly it, but not inside your home.
Tell the whole story: then tell it starting at the end and going back to the beginning while you act it out.
Who is the Cat in the Hat? Where does he come from? How does he decide where to go every day?
Share some poems you know with a friend. Ask your family and friends if they have poems to share.
Have you ever been afraid to tell your parents about something you did? Did you tell them?
Draw Mother’s reaction if she comes home and there’s a giant mess, then draw it if the house is clean.
What if it rained honey instead of water? Act out playing in a honey puddle. Make up some other kinds
of imaginary puddles to play in.
If you could add one more character to the story, who or what would it be? Would this character help
the kids or the Cat? Tell that story.
Words like bump, thump, plop and boing sound like what they mean. Make up some new words that
sound like actions you do.
Cat says he knows some good tricks. What tricks can you do? Hop on one foot, make funny sounds,
stand on tiptoe? Any others? Do them with a friend. Put them together into a dance.
If you had a big red wood box like the Cat’s, what would you keep in it? Draw it.
The Cat says, “It is fun to have fun but you have to know how.” What does that mean?
Why don’t Sally and her brother do what the fish tells them to right away?
Would you let the Cat in the Hat into your home?
Draw a crazy, fancy or silly hat on a paper bag, then wear it.
Was it OK that the Cat made a mess since he cleaned it up?
What would you have Thing One and Thing Two do for you?
Tell the story from the Cat’s or the Things’ point of view.
Who is your favorite character in the story? Why?
Do you like to play outside in the rain? What’s your favorite thing to do?
What’s OK for you to play inside your home? What is not a good thing to play there?
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DRAMA IN ACTION
EXERCISE: The Picker-Upper/Chaos Machine
GRADES: Kindergarten & up
TIME: 10 minutes
SET-UP: This exercise works either with students at desks or in open
space.
SUPPLIES: None
When the Cat in the Hat visits Sally and her brother on a rainy day, he creates quite the mess inside
their house. Just as their mother is about to arrive home to discover the mess, the Cat in the Hat
cleans up everything with the help of his picker-upper machine.
INSTRUCTIONS:
Announce that there is a big mess that must be
cleaned up before mother arrives! You see a cup,
cake, a toy ship, a kite, a fan, a rake, an umbrella and
more, on the floor. As each object is named, a child
becomes that piece of chaotic wreckage, scattered
about the room. We need something to help us
clean up this mess. What if we build a machine? But
not any ordinary machine: a super-deluxe, multipart, picker-upper machine!
machine has a lot of work to do. Rub your hands
together if you are ready to come up to the front of the
room and show us your machine part.
Sample Dialogue
This picker-upper machine will have many parts. Each
part will be unique because you will make it with the
repetitive motion and sound of your choice. One idea
I have for a part is this—“beep, boop, beep, boop.” It
is important that you can keep doing the motion and
sound over and over again because this picker-upper
VARIATION:
An alternate option is to create three smaller
machines with a third of the class participating at
a time. This can be an opportunity to outline good
audience behavior. The observing students can also
have a role in helping you turn on and off, and change
the speed of the machine.
Explain that each part of the machine will
have a repetitive motion and sound, and that
the machine must also be able to move about
the room. Demonstrate an example of patting
your head and saying “beep, boop, beep, boop,
beep, boop” while taking small steps. Ask for a
volunteer to start the machine.
As the machine travels about the room, each part of
the wreckage becomes part of the machine, with its
own sound and movement. Remind students to stick
to the original sound and movement choice they
made and to keep doing it repetitively, as everyone
needs to join to make the picker-upper machine.
Once all students have joined the machine, point
out a lever that will speed up the machine. As you
speed up the machine to the point of breakdown,
signal children individually to fly off the machine,
and re-create the chaos until the machine has
completely broken down. Then rebuild a different
machine to pick it all up again. Repeat as desired.
*A Dramashop is an interactive drama-workshop that Seattle Children’s Theatre offers to schools and community groups
through our Education Outreach program. Dramashops explore the themes, characters, historical context and production
elements of SCT Mainstage plays. Professional SCT teaching artists work with students for an hour, fleshing out themes
and ideas through dynamic theater exercises. Dramashops can occur either before or after seeing the play and can be held
at SCT or at your location. Students get on their feet in these participatory workshops, stretching their imaginations while
learning about the play.
For information about bringing a Dramashop to your classroom or community group, email [email protected].
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RHYME TIME
The Cat in the Hat is a poem. There are many different kinds of poems. In this one, Dr. Seuss wrote sections
of four lines each and the words at the ends of the second and fourth lines rhyme with each other.
The sun did not shine
It was too wet to play
So we sat in the house
All that cold, cold, wet day.
Fill in the rhyming words in these five brand new poems that rhyme in that same pattern. Check the
words in the boxes across from them to help you out. And once you’re done, draw the story of your
favorite one of the poems on the back of this page.
My dog likes to go to the park.
She likes it when I throw a _______________.
She runs very fast and she runs very far,
Until I can’t see her at __________________.
call
all
ball
mall
fall
tall
fight
night
It snowed for an hour.
sight
quite
The ground turned all ___________________.
right
white
If I could be anything
I’d want to be a _______________________.
I’d splash and flip and swim and play
And never wash a ______________________.
care
dare
pair
hair
wear
stare
Not all the great stories are on TV.
Lots of the best are in __________________.
You can read about pirates and princesses.
Or about pilots, teachers or ______________.
My friends and I met
For a fun snowball ______________________.
dish
squish
wish
fish
swish
radish
I love to go to the barber.
The barber cuts my long _________________.
He dyes it, styles it, and makes it look silly.
It matches the clothes that I ______________.
hooks
cooks
looks
nooks
books
brooks
YOUR OWN AMAZING MACHINE!
The Cat in the Hat has a picking-up machine he uses to clean up the mess he and the Things made.
What kind of machine would you like to have?
Write it here:______________________________________________________________
Think of seven parts your machine needs to do what you want and write them here:
1______________________
2______________________
3______________________
4______________________
5______________________
6______________________
7______________________
Draw those parts at the numbers on the machine. You can use the shapes at the bottom of the
page that look like what you need, or make up your own.
7
1
2
6
3
4
5
BOOKLIST
For Children & Young Adults:
Nonfiction:
The Boy on Fairfield Street: How Ted Geisel Grew
Up to Become Dr. Seuss
Kathleen Krull
Fiction:
Born to Read
Judy Sierra
The Cat in the Hat Comes Back
Dr. Seuss
Hooray for Hat!
Brian Won
Ling & Ting: Not Exactly the Same!
Grace Lin
Not a Box
Antoinette Portis
Old Hat New Hat
Stan and Jan Berenstain
Pete the Cat
Eric Litwin
Red Hat
Lita Judge
We Are in a Book!
Mo Willems
What was Dr. Seuss like as a child? This
picture-book biography focuses on Ted Geisel’s
early years and shows the influences that led
him to become the imaginative Dr. Seuss.
For Adults Working with
Children & Young Adults:
Project Kid: 100 Ingenious Crafts for Family Fun
Amanda Kingloff
Tinkerlab: A Hands-on Guide for Little Inventors
Rachelle Doorley
What to Read When: The Books and Stories to
Read with Your Child—and All the Best Times to
Read Them
Pam Allyn
Unplugged Play: No Batteries. No Plugs. Pure Fun.
Bobbi Conner
Includes hundreds of kid-tested games for
ages one to ten—no batteries required!
Website:
Official site of Dr. Seuss and the Cat in the Hat:
Seussville
Booklist prepared by Maren Ostergard
King County Library System
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SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS
Engaging young people with the arts is what we are all about at SCT. We hope that the Active
Audience Guide has helped enhance and extend the theater experience for your family or your
students beyond seeing the show.
Your input is very valuable to us. We’d love to hear your feedback about the guide.
Please take a moment to go online and answer this brief survey: SCT Audience Guide Survey.
You can also email your comments to us at [email protected].
Thank you for your support.
Seattle Children’s Theatre, which celebrates its 41st season in 2015-2016, performs
September through June in the Charlotte Martin and Eve Alvord Theatres at Seattle Center. SCT
has gained acclaim as a leading producer of professional theatre, educational programs and new
scripts for young people. By the end of its 2014-2015 season, SCT had presented over 235 plays,
including 110 world premieres, entertaining over 4 million children.
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