The Cat in the Hat use of the term "cat" to refer to jazz musicians. According to Nel, "Even as [Geisel] wrote books designed to challenge prejudice, he never fully shed the cultural assumptions he grew up with, and was likely unaware of the ways in which his visual imagination replicated the racial ideologies he consciously sought to reject." Geisel once called the fish "my version of Cotton Mather", the Puritan moralist who advised the prosecutors during the Salem witch trials. Betty Mensch and Alan Freeman support this view, writing, "Drawing on old Christian symbolism (the fish was an ancient sign of Christianity) Dr. Seuss
Madeline and the Bad Hat Madeline and the Bad Hat Madeline and the Bad Hat is a children's picture book by Ludwig Bemelmans featuring the popular children's character Madeline. It was first published by Viking Press in 1956. The story begins when the Spanish Ambassador and his wife move in next door and their son, Pepito, is not a good boy. Madeline dubs him a 'bad hat' and the book is controversial due to the cruel nature of Pepito's mischief, notably animal cruelty and pulling various pranks. After he suffers from his own actions involving a group of dogs and a cat, Pepito reforms himself