Three years after its debut, the book had already sold over a million copies, and in 2001, Publishers Weekly listed the book at number nine on its list of best-selling children's books of all time. Reviewers praised it as an exciting alternative to traditional primers. The book was met with immediate critical and commercial success.

Geisel gave varying accounts of how he created The Cat in the Hat, but in the version he told most often, he was so frustrated with the word list from which he could choose words to write his story that he decided to scan the list and create a story based on the first two rhyming words he found. However, because Geisel was already under contract with Random House, the two publishers agreed to a deal: Houghton Mifflin published the education edition, which was sold to schools, and Random House published the trade edition, which was sold in bookstores. Geisel was asked to write a more entertaining primer by William Spaulding, whom he had met during World War II and who was then director of the education division at Houghton Mifflin. Geisel created the book in response to a debate in the United States about literacy in early childhood and the ineffectiveness of traditional primers such as those featuring Dick and Jane. As the children and the fish become more alarmed, the Cat produces a machine that he uses to clean everything up and disappears just before the children's mother comes home. In the process, he and his companions, Thing One and Thing Two, wreck the house. Despite the repeated objections of the children's fish, the Cat shows the children a few of his tricks in an attempt to entertain them. The Cat shows up at the house of Sally and her brother one rainy day when their mother is away.

The story centers on a tall anthropomorphic cat who wears a red and white-striped top hat and a red bow tie. The Cat in the Hat is a 1957 children's book written and illustrated by American author Theodor Geisel, using the pen name Dr. The Cat in the Hat Comes Back (plot wise)

Cat in the hat book