Since my time as president of the Literate Nerd Society in high school (the former library teen program at the library where I now work as teen librarian) I have been performing multiple times a year as the Cat in the Hat at children’s library and school events. Something about my particular brand of movement and interaction meshes well with the character, to the point where after a score of years I find myself thinking of him as my alter ego. The Batman to my Bruce Wayne, only without all those pesky frivolities like a bat cave and billions of dollars.
Over the years my alter ego’s mannerisms have morphed a bit. Not being quite as spry at 28 as I was at 16 this has been as much out of physical necessity as organic development of the character. A bit more jolly marching and a bit less playful skipping and leaping.
Some years, when the kids are shyer and less likely to approach, the cat does less talking and more mime-like antics. Other years when you have a group of strong-willed extroverts the cat engages in verbal banter with the kids, playing dumb when they try to disprove his reality by claiming his face is just make-up.
There is one thing that has remained constant, though, and that is the cat’s devotion to laughter and reading. Nothing makes that mischievous feline happier than to hear a bunch of kids giggling and calling out that “we’re right over here!” when he steps out from behind a stage curtain, looking hard in the opposite direction of the audience trying to figure out where all the children went. Well, okay, there is one thing that makes the cat happier than that. The gasps and giggles and exclamations of “Whoa!” when the cat reads a story to them.
Often when I’m in my civies I’ll have a kid who recognizes me and proclaims that I am, in fact, the Cat in the Hat.
“What? How could I be the Cat in the Hat? I’m not a cat and I’m not wearing a hat.”
“But you put on a costume to look like the Cat in the Hat!”
“Why would I do that when we could just ask the Cat in the Hat to come down and visit us? That would be silly.”
“But…you’re the Cat in the Hat!”
“I don’t know, that seems pretty far fetched to me.”
Maybe its a bit silly to go to such lengths to maintain my “secret” identity, but I feel like these sorts of things are more important than ever in our world. How often do we get to see our favorite book characters come to life in person in front of us? Doesn’t that little bit of magic make childhood just a little more special? Don’t we all read with that tiny hope, no matter how small and secret, that maybe, just maybe, a piece of that book will come to life for us? Don’t we all read the more when, on occasion, a piece of it actually does?
Ultimately that’s what the Cat is for kids. A realized hope of an adventure, and the promise of a tiny spark of magic to the world. A spark that can make dreams and wishes come true, if only we learn how to fan it to a flame.
