By Tish Rabe
The Cat in the Hat takes the whole solar system in one bouncing rhyme, and somehow the facts stick.
The Cat in the Hat loads Dick and Sally into a rocket and runs them past every planet in the solar system, all of it in Seuss-style rhyme. They find out how a million Earths would fit inside the sun, why Mars looks red, which planet spins on its side, and how astronauts drove a car around on the moon. Aristides Ruiz draws it in the Seuss style, so it looks like a story even though every page is teaching something. It's short, it's loud, and it moves fast.
The rhyme is the trick. Facts that would slide right off a child in plain sentences stay put when they arrive on a beat, and a week later they're still reciting which planet spins on its side. It asks almost nothing of a young reader, so the child who can't yet manage a fact book still comes away knowing the planets in order. And because it's the Cat in the Hat, nobody feels like they've been handed homework.