Tag Archives: Cat in the Hat

Revolutionary Mother Goose

Mother goose rhymes, nonsense verse, and playful fantasy are essential to our mental health.

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Why We Love the Cat in the Hat

Dr. Seuss’s “Cat in the Hat” engages children the way Hollywood genre movies engage audiences–but offering titillating transgressive fantasies before hurriedly restoring order.

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Honoring Our Inner Wild Rumpus

Illustration from Where the Wild Things Are I see that Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are (1963) has been turned into a film, which has led Slate columnist Jack Shafer to revisit a controversy about the book. Apparently Sendak still can’t let go of a critique by psychologist Bruno Bettelheim. I was surprised to learn […]

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Prancing Poetry and a Child’s Imagination

Last week I gave a list of my favorite children’s books when I was young.  My father, who is a poet along with being a French professor, read us poetry as well as fiction (each night, one story or chapter and one poem for each of my three brothers and me), so I thought I’d […]

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What Personal Reading Histories Tell Us

I can’t recommend enough the value of writing your reading history. It will reveal to you sides of yourself you didn’t know you had.

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