The Cat in the Hat book's title character in the tradition of con artists in American art, including the title characters from Meredith Willson's "The Music Man" and L. Frank Baum's "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz". Nel also contends that Geisel identified with the Cat, pointing to a self portrait of Geisel in which he appears as the Cat, which was published alongside a profile about him in "The Saturday Evening Post" on July 6, 1957. Michael K. Frith, who worked as Geisel's editor, concurs, arguing that "The Cat in the Hat and Ted Geisel were inseparable and the same. I think there's no question
The Cat in the Hat most important academic controversy" of the Cold War era. Academic Louis Menand contends that ""The Cat in the Hat" transformed the nature of primary education and the nature of children's books. It not only stood for the idea that reading ought to be taught by phonics; it also stood for the idea that language skills—and many other subjects—ought to be taught through illustrated storybooks, rather than primers and textbooks." In 1983, Geisel told Jonathan Cott, "It is the book I'm proudest of because it had something to do with the death of the "Dick and Jane" primers." The book led