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 words he found that rhymed. The words he found were "cat" and "hat". The book was met with immediate critical and commercial success. Reviewers praised it as an exciting alternative to traditional primers. Three years after its debut, the book had already sold over a million copies, and in 2001 "Publishers Weekly" listed the book at number nine on its list of best-selling children's books of all time. The book's success led to the creation of Beginner Books, a publishing house centered on producing similar books for young children learning to read. In 1983, Geisel said, "It is the book