IT was a pleasant trip down memory lane to be reacquainted with the Cat In The Hat, Dr Seuss, after more years than I want to think about.

I first came across this series with my children in the early 1980s, and now I have the pleasure a second time around with my six-year-old grandson.

Young Marco is instructed by his father to keep his eyes open and be attentive to all that is around him as he walks along Mulberry Street and to report back to him. Not content in telling what he has really seen, Marco's imagination turns the everyday, mundane into exciting and extravagant - a horse and cart becomes a chariot drawn by a zebra, and by leaps and bounds this extraordinary sight quite reasonably becomes a brass band being pulled along by an elephant and two giraffes with a Maharajah and Mayor thrown in.

The revamped series of Dr Seuss books have been colour-coded with the green backed books aimed at younger children with bright simple illustrations and as with all Dr Seuss tales the narrative is in rhyme. Next year Mike Myers will transport the character to the cinema screen.

Updated: 09:10 Wednesday, September 10, 2003