The Cat's Quizzer (Beginner Books(R)) [Hardcover]

Dr. Seuss (Author)

Book Description

Age Level: 5 and up | Grade Level: K and up | Series: Beginner Books(R)

The Cat in the Hat challenges readers with seemingly silly questions: Do pineapples grow on pine or apple trees? Do roosters sleep on their backs or sides? Kids will pick up a host of oddball facts, have fun juggling sense and nonsense, and exercise their imaginations.  

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

Illus. in full color. The Cat in the Hat challenges readers with seemingly silly questions: Do pineapples grow on pine or apple trees? Do roosters sleep on their backs or sides? Kids will pick up a host of oddball facts, have fun juggling sense and nonsense, and exercise their imaginations.  

About the Author

Dr. Seuss was born Theodor Geisel in Springfield, Massachusetts on March 2, 1904.  After attending Dartmouth College and Oxford University, he began a career in advertising.  His advertising cartoons, featuring Quick, Henry, the Flit!,  appeared in several leading American magazines.  Dr. Seuss's first children's book, And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street, hit the market in 1937, and the world of children's literature was changed forever!  In 1957, Seuss's The Cat in the Hat became the prototype for one of Random House's best- selling series, Beginner Books.  This popular series combined engaging stories with outrageous illustrations and playful sounds to teach basic reading skills.  Brilliant, playful, and always respectful of children, Dr. Seuss charmed his way into the consciousness of four generations of youngsters and parents.  In the process, he helped kids learn to read.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1984 and three Academy Awards, Seuss was the author and illustrator of 44 children's books, some of which have been made into audiocassettes, animated television specials, and videos for children of all ages.  Even after his death in 1991, Dr. Seuss continues to be the best-selling author of children's books in the world.  

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 5 and up
  
• Hardcover: 72 pages
• Publisher: Random House Books for Young Readers (August 12, 1976)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0394832965
• ISBN-13: 978-0394832968
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 0.4 x 9.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #573,291 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

"A person's a person, no matter how small," Theodor Seuss Geisel, a.k.a. Dr. Seuss, would say. "Children want the same things we want. To laugh, to be challenged, to be entertained and delighted."

Brilliant, playful, and always respectful of children, Dr. Seuss charmed his way into the consciousness of four generations of youngsters and parents. In the process, he helped millions of kids learn to read.

Dr. Seuss was born Theodor Geisel in Springfield, Massachusetts, on March 2, 1904. After graduating from Dartmouth College in 1925, he went to Oxford University, intending to acquire a doctorate in literature. At Oxford, Geisel met Helen Palmer, whom he wed in 1927. Upon his return to America later that year, Geisel published cartoons and humorous articles for Judge, the leading humor magazine in America at that time. His cartoons also appeared in major magazines such as Life, Vanity Fair, and Liberty. Geisel gained national exposure when he won an advertising contract for an insecticide called Flit. He coined the phrase, "Quick, Henry, the Flit!" which became a popular expression.

Geisel published his first children's book, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, in 1937, after 27 publishers rejected it.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1984, an Academy Award, three Emmy Awards, three Grammy Awards, and three Caldecott Honors, Geisel wrote and illustrated 44 books. While Theodor Geisel died on September 24, 1991, Dr. Seuss lives on, inspiring generations of children of all ages to explore the joys of reading.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Everybody Passes . . . and Learns Thinking and Reading, Too!, December 27, 2000

By 

Donald Mitchell "Jesus Loves You!" (Thanks for Providing My Reviews over 109,000 Helpful Votes Globally) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Cat's Quizzer (Beginner Books(R)) (Hardcover)

This book clearly deserves more than five stars, and is one of the very best Dr. Seuss books for beginning readers. The only thing that's missing are the rhymes!

"Here is Ziggy Zozzfozzel with his sister Zizzy."

"They got every question wrong.

Are YOU smarter than a Zozzfozzel?"

Aw, if school had only been full of challenges like that, everyone would have focused on learning instead of grades. Some may object that by setting the standard low, accomplishment is stilted. I think it is enhanced, because children will want to get as many more right as they can versus the Zozzfozzels.

By the way, although this is a book of quiz questions (nicely feeding into the mania of shows like Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?), this is the teacher's edition. The answers can be found on pages 58-62.

Let me begin by praising this book as a beginning reader. Each item is well illustrated so that a child can associate the words with the images. There is a lot of variety in short words (only a few words are long, like the nonsensical name, Zozzfozzel). So a youngster can learn more words from this book than from 2 or 3 of most beginning readers. That makes the book more valuable. Also, the context of asking questions makes the words and images more vivid and memorable, which should speed memorization and learning. Your child can clearly grow into this book over a period of time. The book has mostly pre-school words, but it also has words up to about 2nd grade level.

What just bowls me over about this book is the discipline in the quiz questions. First, there are lots of them. So for most children, you will take just a few at one sitting. You could probably work on this book for a week or more the first time you go through it, doing a little bit every day. By the time you pick any page up again, it will seem fresh.

Second, the questions test a variety of thinking methods. Mostly the quizzes fall into these categories:

Common sense -- Are freckles catching?

Spatial puzzles -- gears, ropes, and mazes to study

Observing -- Do eyebrows or mustaches grow faster?

Word meaning -- How many kings are women?

Nature facts -- Which ends of a bee does the stinging?

Games -- On a tic tac toe board, who will win?

What If? -- Imagine that you jump up in the air and don't come down. What should you do?

As you can see, these kinds of questions are perfect for using a few Socratic questions to help guide the youngster down a thinking path that can lead to a correct answer. This means you have a chance to help your child with problem-solving strategies. You can also introduce learning resources (like pictures of a bee in a book) as ways to locate a correct answer.

Further, you will get a sense of where your child takes to things like a duck to water . . . and where it is harder for her or him. Then you can spend more time on those trickier areas to boost skill and confidence.

Although the questions hardly make the book into a Mensa qualifying test (for high IQ people), many of them are interesting enough to keep the adults alert. Also, there is a lot of potential for more than one correct answer (especially with the "what if" questions). This provides a chance to exercise imagination and to expose ambiguity.

After you have exhausted and worn out this quiz, you can go on to create new quiz questions for one another. I suggest that you keep it a competition against getting them all wrong, rather than indirectly setting up any other kind of comparison.

Now, where do pineapples come from (besides the grocery store)?

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Classic Cat, May 7, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Cat's Quizzer (Beginner Books(R)) (Hardcover)

One of my earliest memories is going to the library and checking this book out, My older sister and I would sit and look at this book for hours and hours and although the quizzes were easy enough to solve they were so amusing that you didn't mind repeating them time after time. I imagine that we must have worn that poor book out with all the love and attention we gave it which is just the kind of fate any great book deserves.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars good more than once, April 11, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Cat's Quizzer (Beginner Books(R)) (Hardcover)

True, once you have read this book once, you will already know the answers to the questions. This is no worse, however, than knowing what happens next in any other Suess book. The rhyming and the wonderful Suess pictures are still there. I still find it entertaining to read again and again, and so does my 5-month-old son.