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 there were a lot of Dick and Jane devotees, and my book was considered too fresh and irreverent. But Bennett Cerf at Random House had asked for trade rights, and it just took off in the bookstores." Geisel told the Morgans, "Parents understood better than school people the necessity for this kind of reader." After three years in print, "The Cat in the Hat" had sold nearly one million copies. By then, the book had been translated into French, Chinese, Swedish, and Braille. In 2001, "Publishers Weekly" placed it at number nine on its list of the best-selling children's books