In my Literature for Children class, we’ve been learning how to recognize and evaluate quality children’s books, including picture books, easy readers,  children’s novels, and informational books.

However, prior to the 1950s, easy readers were practically non-existent. That is, until Theodor Seuss Geisel (or as you know him, Dr. Seuss) took on the challenge of writing a children’s book using a list of only 220 sight words. The result of this endeavor was the beloved children’s book, The Cat in the Hat.

To understand the scope and difficulty of this achievement, our class was tasked with writing our OWN easy reader, and 80% of the words in our book had to come from the Dolch word list, a list of sight words recognizable to children up through the third grade. Check it out below!