The Cat in the Hat (film) start until after the 2000 Christmas/comedy film "How the Grinch Stole Christmas", based on another Dr. Seuss book of the same name, became a commercial success. Brian Grazer, who was the producer of "The Grinch", stated, "Because we grew up with these books, and because they have such universal themes and the illustrations ignite such fantasy in your mind as a child — the aggregation of all those feelings — it leaves an indelible, positive memory. And so when I realized I had a chance to convert first "The Grinch" and then, "The Cat in the Hat", into movies, I
The Cat in the Hat for the series, including "The Cat in the Hat Comes Back" (1958), "Green Eggs and Ham" (1960), "Hop on Pop" (1963), and "Fox in Socks" (1965). He initially used word lists of limited vocabularies to create these books, as he had with "The Cat in the Hat", but moved away from the lists as he came to believe "that a child could learn any amount of words if fed them slowly and if the books were amply illustrated". Other authors also contributed notable books to the series, including "A Fly Went By" (1958), "Sam and the Firefly" (1958), "Go, Dog.