The Cat in the Hat Comes Back: a Review

Since I spent quite a while on this piece I thought I'd might as well put it here so someone can actually read it. Enjoy your bonus update! And keep in mind it's all in good fun, I hope this won't make people shout at me like dumping on Catcher in the Rye usually does.


I'm going to start with total honesty; I love Dr. Seuss. If I could choose between having my brain replaced with Skittles, having my toes replaced with olives or having every single line of Dr. Seuss being engraved into my memory at the cost of all my knowledge of the effect of fire on deodorant then I'd pick that last one without hesitating for more than a few seconds while I comprehended your mad request. But maybe that's a bad example.

My point is that I've never read a bad Dr. Seuss book, which is why The Cat in the Hat Comes Back caught me off guard. To start with I'm going to give a basic rundown of the plot, so I'm going to have to issue a, frankly, massive spoiler warning right here.

Ready? Are the people who haven't read it gone yet? Regardless here we go, may your seating comfort levels be damned. The story starts when Sally and...the boy who is only ever referred to in first person. Off to a thoughtful start in that respect, as it seems that the narrator is also the main character who never names himself. Maybe it'll turn out that he and The Cat in the Hat are the same person, who knows. This would be a much different book were that the case, let me tell you.

Anyway the kids are shoveling snow when the aforementioned cat performs an act of the aforementioned returning into their lives by immediately going into their house and using the bath. So begins the biggest, most important plot point of the entire novel, a result of frankly wildly fast pacing. In the first book their was a lot more discussion before things started happening, there was the character development of the kids (regardless of its short length, it was there), then the fateful warning of the fish (which we'll get to later) and only THEN did things start balancing on top of other things.

Moving along, the Cat's fated bath leads to a horrible pink ring mark being left all around the bath, which leads to a huge sequence of wiping the 'spot' off things onto other things which in turn are wiped on other things and then the cycle starts again. This is one of my main criticisms of the book, there is no real variety in the things that are happening here. Everything revolves around this barely logical plot point of pink spots, and if it's one thing integral to my enjoyment of the Seuss, it's logic. The only real deviation from this wiping things on other things go-to plot movement is the Cat's new ability to pull smaller cats out of his hat. This is the ONLY other thing to happen in the entire story and it left me rather underwhelmed.

Let's talk about the first book for a second because I feel we need some perspective on this. The Cat in the Hat lit up my day when I found in my attic the other week. The voice of reason represented by the fish constantly foreshadowing catastrophe, to the point of declaring what the consequences of letting the cat in the house would be, seemed very powerful to me, especially when he was proven right at the end. And what an end! A highly philosophical moral question was posed by the Cat's final tidy-up. Just because he cleaned up all the mess he made in the process of forcing an entry into the children's home, does it really make up for the fact that he messed up the entire house in the process? Does the end fit the means in this case or should a more strict deontolgical set of ethics be put in place saying that his actions were all shameful no matter what he did to correct them. Then let's not forget the obvious symbolism of Pandora's box preceding this. Fabulous.

The Cat in the Hat Comes back does not deliver the same rushing thrills, ending on the snow being cleaned of all the pink spots that stained it after they were thrown out of the house by the Catty Cleaner, which raises another complaint. The fact that the pink spots were thrown out of the house should have meant that the story is over. I'm fairly willing to bet that the mother would not have mourned for too long over the loss of a slight aesthetic of snow outside. Snow melts. Snow gets covered in urine and dog excrement...or dog urine. When snow gets dirty nobody cares. Apart from snowmen, of course. Maybe they were trying to please an unseen and unhappy snow-based creature, I simply don't know.

However I have to admit that the rhyme and rhythm of The Doctor's verse are still on top form here, despite a plot weaker than non-alcoholic beer, and this is the only saving grace involved. This sequel simply does not deliver as much as it should, which is so plain and simple that I can end on it. Goodnight.