The Cat in the Hat and The Lorax

The Cat in the Hat, is one of most well recognized books ever written by Dr. Seuss. Children can relate to the constant tension created between good sense and bad sense in the story. The tension continues to escalate throughout the story as more and more things go wrong and chaos is caused by the Cat in the Hat.

A contemporary book with similar tension is If You Give a Moose a Muffin, by Laura Numeroff. In the story, the moose starts out with a simple request which continues to escalate with each page. Each time the moose asks for something, a bigger mess is made, or more problems occur. Chaos continues to escalate until the story comes full circle once more.

The Lorax, was considered by Dr. Seuss to be his best work. The story is controversial today because of its didacticism. It is considered didactic because of the way environmental and ecological issues are pushed on the readers. The book teaches children how important it is to take care of the environment.

I believe there are very few didactic children's books today. More current books are not as forceful. They voice all sides and allow the reader to make a decision. Today, more learning is done by self discovery. We want students to be presented with information and to be able to make their own decisions.