Up until the mid-1950s, there was a degree of separation between illustrated educational books and illustrated picturebooks. That all changed, dramatically and with much national fanfare, with the 1957 publication of Dr. Seuss’s The Cat In The Hat (Random House). Here was an early reader, full of 220 madly rhyming words, which made its way into our elementary school classrooms.

The Cat In The Hat is a tremendously important book. Not just an important picturebook or an important children’s book, but an important book without any qualifiers! The publication of the book in 1957 forever changed the way in which children would learn to read and be educated. Reading COULD be fun!

The following table is an excerpt from the Children's Picturebook Price Guide. The estimated values are for first edition books, with dust jackets. The Children's Picturebook Price Guide explains in understandable terms the methods to correctly identify first edition Dr. Seuss books.

The Beginning of Beginner Books

The Cat In The Hat was published by Random House. However because of it’s success, an independent publishing company was formed, called Beginner Books. Theodor Seuss Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss, was the president and editor.

Beginner Books was chartered as a series of books oriented toward various stages of early reading development. The second book in the series was nearly as popular, The Cat In The Hat, published in 1958.

Springing from this series of beginning readers were such standards as A Fly Went By (1958), Sam and the Firefly (1958), Green Eggs and Ham (1960), Go, Dog. Go! (1961), Hop On Pop (1963), and Fox in Socks (1965), each a monument in the picturebook industry, and also significant in the historical development of early readers. All are still in print and remain very popular over forty years after their initial publication.

Creators in the Beginner Book series were such luminaries as Jan & Stan Berenstain, P. D. Eastman, Roy McKie, and Helen Palmer (Mr. Geisel’s wife). The Beginner Books dominated the children’s picturebook market of the 1960’s, and still plays a significant role today within the phases of students’ reading development.

Before The Cat

Prior to the publication of his first children’s book in 1937, And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street (Vanguard Press, 1937)), Theodor Seuss Geisel was a prominent and successful humorist illustrator for such magazines as Judge and Life.

By the time of The Cat In The Hat's publication, Dr. Seuss was a very successful children’s book illustrator, having published twelve children’s books, three of which had won Caldecott Honor awards. Actually, prior to the publication of The Cat In The Hat, one could easily say that Dr. Seuss had already had two successful illustration careers, one as a humorist and one as a picturebook creator.

John Hersey and Dr. Seuss

Mr. Geisel created The Cat In The Hat in reaction to a Life Magazine article by Pulitzer Prize winning author John Hersey, published in the May 24, 1954 issue, titled “Why Do Students Bog Down On First R? A LOCAL COMMITTEE SHEDS LIGHT ON A NATIONAL PROBLEM: READING.” In the article, Hersey was critical of the then current state of school primers,

In the classroom boys and girls are confronted with books that have insipid illustrations depicting the slicked-up lives of other children. [Existing primers] feature abnormally courteous, unnaturally clean boys and girls.” “In bookstores, anyone can buy brighter, livelier books featuring strange and wonderful animals and children who behave naturally, i.e., sometimes misbehave. Given incentive from school boards, publishers could do as well with primers.

Hersey’s arguments were enumerated in some ten pages of Life Magazine, which was the leading periodical of its time. After detailing many issues contributing to the dilemma with student’s reading, toward the end of the article, Hersey redundantly asked:

Why should [school primers] not have pictures that widen rather than narrow the associative richness the children give to the words they illustrate—drawings like those of the wonderfully imaginative geniuses among children’s illustrators, Tenniel, Howard Pyle, “Dr. Seuss,” Walt Disney?

Geisel responded to this “challenge” by rigidly limiting himself to a small set of words from an elementary school vocabulary list, then crafted a story based upon two randomly selected words—cat and hat. The results of this personal challenge are nothing short of amazing!

After The Cat

Successful before the publication of the The Cat In The Hat, after it’s publication, Dr. Seuss became an ‘overnight’ national phenomenon.

After the publication of The Cat In The Hat, numerous feature articles were published in Life, Look and other prominent periodicals. The book’s characters, along with other Seuss creations, were extended into toys and other products, occurring long before co-merchandising and line extensions became commonplace for children’s character marketing.

Values for the First Fifty Beginner Books

The values in the following table are for first edition books, with dust jackets. In most cases, the first edition book cannot be properly identified without the dust jacket.

The First Fifty Beginner Books
Series	Year	Title	VG+	Illustrator	Author
B-01	1957	The Cat In The Hat	$4,000	Dr. Seuss	Dr. Seuss
B-02	1958	Cat In The Hat Comes Back	$300	Dr. Seuss	Dr. Seuss
B-03	1958	A Fly Went By	$260	Fritz Siebel	Mike McClintock
B-04	1958	The Big Jump & Other Stories	$180	Katherine Evans	Benjamin Elkin
B-05	1958	A Big Ball Of String	$180	Marion Holland	Marion Holland
B-06	1958	Sam And The Firefly	$260	P.D. Eastman	P. D. Eastman
B-07	1959	You Will Go To The Moon	$60	Lee J. Ames	Mae & Ira Freeman
B-08	1959	Cowboy Andy	$180	E. Raymond Kinstler	Edna W. Chandler
B-09	1959	The Whales Go By	$180	Paul Galdone	Fred Phleger
B-10	1959	Stop That Ball!	$180	Fritz Siebel	Mike McClintock
B-11	1959	Bennett Cerf’s Book Of Laughs	$180	Carl Rose	Bennett Cerf
B-12	1959	Ann Can Fly	$180	Robert Lopshire	Fred Phleger
B-13	1960	One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish	$640	Dr. Seuss	Dr. Seuss
B-14	1960	The King’s Wish & Other Stories	$120	Leonard Shortall	Benjamin Elkin
B-15	1960	Bennett Cerf’s Book Of Riddles	$180	Roy McKié	Bennett Cerf
B-16	1960	Green Eggs And Ham	$4,800	Dr. Seuss	Dr. Seuss
B-17	1960	Put Me In The Zoo	$320	Robert Lopshire	Robert Lopshire
B-18	1960	Are You My Mother?	$260	P.D. Eastman	P. D. Eastman
B-19	1961	Ten Apples Up On Top!	$360	Roy McKié	Theo LeSieg (Seuss)
B-20	1961	Go, Dog. Go!	$360	P.D. Eastman	P. D. Eastman
B-21	1961	Little Black, A Pony	$120	James Schucker	Robert Farley
B-22	1961	Look Out For Pirates	$120	H. B. (Herman) Vestal	Iris Vinton
B-23	1961	Fish Out Of Water	$240	P.D. Eastman	Helen Palmer
B-24	1961	Bennett Cerf’s More Riddles	$140	Roy McKié	Bennett Cerf
B-25	1962	Robert The Rose Horse	$120	P.D. Eastman	Joan Heilbroner
B-26	1962	I Was Kissed By A Seal At The Zoo	$120	Lynn (photos) Fayman	Helen Palmer
B-27	1962	Snow	$140	Roy McKié	P. D. Eastman
B-28	1962	The Big Honey Hunt	$240	Stan & Jan Berenstain	Same
B-29	1963	Hop On Pop	$520	Dr. Seuss	Dr. Seuss
B-30	1963	Dr. Seuss’s ABC	$520	Dr. Seuss	Dr. Seuss
B-31	1963	Do You Know What I’m Going To Do Next Saturday?	$80	Lynn Fayman (photos)	Helen Palmer
B-32	1963	Summer	$140	Roy McKié	Alice Low
B-33	1963	Little Black Goes To The Circus	$120	James Schucker	Walter Farley
B-34	1964	Bennett Cerf’s Book Of Animal Riddles	$120	Roy McKié	Bennett Cerf
B-35	1964	Why I Built The Boogle House	$100	Lynn Fayman (photos)	Helen Palmer
B-36	1964	The Bike Lesson	$160	Stan & Jan Berenstain	Same
B-37	1964	How To Make Flibbers	$160	Robert Lopshire	Robert Lopshire
B-38	1965	Fox In Socks	$260	Dr. Seuss	Dr. Seuss
B-39	1965	The King, The Mice And The Cheese	$120	Eric Gurney	Nancy Gurney
B-40	1965	I Wish That I Had Duck Feet	$500	B. Tobey	Theo LeSieg (Seuss)
B-41	1966	The Bears’ Picnic	$160	Stan & Jan Berenstain	Same
B-42	1966	Don And Donna Go To Bat	$160	B. Tobey	Al Perkins
B-43	1966	You Will Live Under The Sea	$80	Ward Brackett	Fred Phleger
B-44	1966	Come Over To My House	$320	Richard Erdoes	Theo LeSieg (Seuss)
B-45	1967	Babar Loses His Crown	$140	Laurent de Brunhoff	Laurent de Brunhoff
B-46	1967	The Bear Scouts	$140	Stan & Jan Berenstain	Same
B-47	1967	The Digging-Est Dog	$100	Eric Gurney	Al Perkins
B-48	1967	Travels Of Doctor Dolittle	$100	Philip Wende	Al Perkins (adapted)
B-49	1968	Doctor Dolittle And The Pirates	$100	Philip Wende	Al Perkins (adapted)
B-50	1968	Off To The Races	$100	Leo Summers	Fred Phleger

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Linda and Stan Zielinski are "serious collectors having fun with fun books." They have collected children’s picturebooks for over fifteen years, and spent six years combing bookstores, libraries, and the internet acquiring data for the Children's Picturebook Price Guide.

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