In Search of Dr. Seuss 1994

Kathy Lane, Kathy Najimy, a reporter, travels to Theodor Geisel’s La Jolla, California, home and encounters a peculiar figure. She explains that the editor of The Ferncrest Times wants a feature on Dr. Seuss, and when she taps him as a source, the figure reveals himself to be the Cat in the Hat, Matt Frewer. Kathy discovers a magical book labeled, Open a book, open your imagination, and the book whisks her into Geisel’s whimsical world. The Cat in the Hat then shows her a political cartoon that would become The Sneetches, guiding her toward a door that opens onto a sunny beach where they read The Sneetches together. He shares a glimmering slice of history, telling Kathy that Geisel faced scrutiny during World War I.

The journey leads Kathy into a kitchen where she meets Mr. Hunch, Christopher Lloyd, from Hunches in Bunches. They share a meal and talk about his childhood, after which he unveils a book drawn from those memories, McElligot’s Pool. Next, Kathy spots Horton the Elephant and slips into a jungle, where she reads Horton Hatches the Egg. The Cat in the Hat reappears to fill in more about Seuss’s life in the 1920s, and Kathy wanders into The World of Advertising, where the Ad Man, David Paymer, and the Ad Woman, Andrea Martin, explain Seuss’s ties to advertising and how his work intersected with that world.

The room rocks and Kathy is transported to Mulberry Street, where she meets Marco, J.D. Daniels. She helps Marco craft a story to tell his father after his walk home from school, and the tale grows as Kathy and Marco insert more and more wonders: a horse-drawn cart gives way to a procession featuring an elephant, a mayor, flying machines with confetti, a Raja, a band, and more. Marco keeps the frame as a horse pulling the cart, but then he leaves the scene.

Sgt. Mulvaney, Patrick Stewart, guides Kathy to a revolving door that symbolizes how readers rejected Seuss’s first book, and the Sergeant disappears through it. Kathy follows into a hall where the Cat in the Hat awaits, and the whimsical conversation about Seuss’s darker political cartoons resumes. An alarm sounds and the Cat vanishes, leaving Kathy to meet The Voice of America, Billy Crystal, who screens a documentary—Hitler Lives—made by Geisel and his wife. The Voice of America reveals that Geisel’s early drawings of Yertle the Turtle showed the tyrant-like mustache and Nazi uniform, a discovery presented through a live-action gospel-style moment.

The Cat in the Hat returns to share his own origin story as told by a father reading to his two daughters, and Kathy then enters the story of Green Eggs and Ham. There, she’s chased by multiple Sam-I-Am, Howie Mandel, who urge her to try the green eggs and ham. The chase carries her to the mountains where the Grinch once lived, and a woman reads to her from How the Grinch Stole Christmas! The Cat’s journey through Seuss’s worlds continues to the Street of the Lifted Lorax, where he explains Seuss’s late-1960s life and the personal costs behind continued professional success.

A scene with a bucket-and-barter payment—15 cents, a nail, and the shell of a great, great, great grandfather snail—leads to the telling of The Lorax, sung and staged as the Once-ler retells his tale, while a new Truffula Tree is planted and the marching music signals a Butter Battle Book moment. Kathy and the Cat in the Hat finally return to the library, where they sing Oh, the Places You’ll Go!, and are whisked back to Geisel’s house. Dr. Seuss offers a closing reflection: a wish for children’s world peace and an enduring sense of wonder, echoed in the verse, “From there to here, from here to there. Funny things are everywhere.”

I hope for the children a world of peace and they would never lose their sense of wonder and discovery. From there to here, from here to there. Funny things are everywhere.