To predict the future of books in this digital era, the best place to start is with the simplest books. When the iPad launched, most of the top 10 books were picture e-books designed for children, with a customized version of "The Cat in the Hat" by Dr. Seuss topping the list. This focus on children's books continues, with Dr. Seuss e-books last week released for Android devices.
The leading role for children's e-books is good news for parents worried about literacy in a world of decreasing print. Indeed, this is the second time that Dr. Seuss has reinvented the idea of the children's book.
In the spirit of "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas," who discovered the holiday is about more than getting gifts, this is a good time to reflect that while Dr. Seuss first taught generations to read in print, his classics have a bright future on electronic devices because of the deeper engagement in reading they make possible.
A half-century ago, reading was losing out to then-new- media distractions. Novelist John Hersey worried in Life magazine in 1954 that the dry children's books of the time, such as the "Dick and Jane" series, were not competing with "television, radio, movies, comic books, magazines" and other passive media. He noted that "words, to mean anything, demand an act of imagination."
Cartoonist Theodor Seuss Geisel was inspired by Hersey's challenge. He set out to combine text and illustrations for a better how-to-read experience for children. His publisher asked for a book for beginners using only 225 words. The result was "The Cat in the Hat," the whimsical book featuring a large, mischievous feline who entertained two children and annoyed their pet fish on a "cold, cold wet day."
But when "The Cat in the Hat" was released in 1957, school districts refused to use it. "There were a lot of 'Dick and Jane' devotees," Geisel once explained, "and my book was considered too fresh and irreverent." He said that parents "understood better than school people the need for this kind of reader." Within three years, one million copies in several languages were sold.
"Nothing would please Dr. Seuss more than the e-book adaptations of his books," says Robert Bernstein, the former chairman of Random House who traversed the U.S. with Geisel to popularize the books. Mr. Bernstein tells me that Dr. Seuss helped found the Beginner Books series to shake up education.
"He edited all of the Beginner Books, helping authors like P.D. Eastman, who wrote 'Go Dog Go,'" Mr. Bernstein recalls. "Ted was always perplexed at why 'The Cat in the Hat' did not become a reader in schools, but his greatest joy was that Beginner Books he thought, and most of us agree, would get children interested in reading at a very early age. The e-books acceptance would have thrilled him, and I'm sure he would have found new ways to use the new medium."
Dr. Seuss's simple formula works well in a multimedia era. "Dr. Seuss analyzed the reading process, particularly the part that pertained to a child's ability to correlate words with the images and sounds that made them legible," writes biographer Donald Pease. Each keyword in his text included an illustration.
On tablets such as the iPad, Dr. Seuss stories are true to the original, with added learning interactivity. The stories can be narrated by professionals, with words changing color as they're read; children can tap an image to have its word appear, or they can read themselves and press words when they need help. The tablet delivers the active connection between words and images that Dr. Seuss always intended.
Dr. Seuss, already famous for wartime political cartoons, used his books to teach lessons that remain relevant. "Yertle the Turtle" featured a turtle king who sat on a forced stack of his subject turtles so he could brag, "There's nothing, no, NOTHING, that's higher than me." A lowly turtle led a rebellion, with the lesson, "All the turtles are free, as turtles and, maybe, all creatures should be." After touring postwar Japan, Dr. Seuss wrote "Horton Hears a Who" about an elephant that saves tiny creatures on a speck of a dandelion. The idea of individualism was just taking hold in Japan, the inspiration for the book's maxim that "a person's a person no matter how small."
Something is always lost as technology advances, and this will be true of the decline of print. But since technology can't be stopped, we should make the most of it. Or, as Dr. Seuss urged in his final book, "Oh, the Places You'll Go": "Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting. So . . . get on your way!"