The Cat in the Hat voter’s favorite

Theodore Geisel, writing as Dr. Seuss, created The Cat in the Hat in response to a 1954 Life magazine article bemoaning weak reading skills among primary school students. The article blamed poorly written primer books and challenged publishers. Responding to this "challenge," Dr. Seuss began work. With a list of 223 words his publisher thought children would be learning in school, Dr. Seuss created The Cat In The Hat after nine months work. The story is 1626 words in length and uses a vocabulary of only 223 distinct words, of which 54 occur exactly once and 33 twice. Only a single word – 'another' – has three syllables, while 14 have two and the remaining 221 are monosyllabic. The longest words are 'something' and 'playthings'. The Cat in the Hat has gone on to sell 7.2 million copies in the United States alone, making it the 9th best-selling hardcover children's book of all time.