STEPHEN LEWIS gives a delighted welcome to the return of an old childhood favourite...

The sun did not shine.

It was too wet to play.

So we sat in the house

All that cold, cold wet day.

I sat there with Sally,

We sat there, we two.

And I said, "How I wish

We had something to do"

THE opening lines of The Cat In The Hat are enough to make any child who's ever spent a long, dull day stuck indoors shudder. The pictures that go with it - a forlorn little boy and girl sitting miserably at the window staring out at the rain - only add to the sense of boredom.

But this is the wonderful world of Dr Seuss and you just know something's going to happen.

Sure enough it soon does. BUMP goes the door as it is flung back by a mysterious creature in a tall, striped, baggy hat. Two forlorn little faces look up at him in bewilderment. And then the little boy continues his narration:

We looked!

And we saw him!

The Cat in the Hat.

And he said to us,

'Why do you sit there like that?'

Before long, the Cat, a whirlwind of energy, has taken over the children's home. He stands on balls, juggling books, umbrellas, cups and the children's pet goldfish in a tank; and soon he introduces Thing 1 and Thing 2, two odd little creatures in red jump suits and electric blue hair, who promptly turn the house upside down in pursuit of harmless fun.

It's a wonderfully imaginative, child's-eye take on the 'while the cat's away, the mice will play' proverb, as the house descends into chaos and the two children become worried about what their mother will say when she gets home.

But it all ends up happily - and if The Cat In The Hat isn't going to let your toddler discover the joys of reading, nothing will.

More than half a billion Dr Seuss books have sold across the world, making them just about the most popular books for the under-sevens (and their parents!) anywhere. And the great news is that Dr Seuss is back.

The venerable author, whose real name is Theodore Seuss Giesel, may have died in September 1991, aged 87. But next week, on May 6, HarperCollins Children's Books are re-launching ten of his best-loved titles.

They include The Cat In The Hat - but also other childhood classics such as How The Grinch Stole Christmas, Green Eggs And Ham, Fox In Socks and The Sneetches and Other Stories (see review).

Other titles in the relaunch include Dr Seuss' ABC; The Cat In The Hat Comes Back; Hop On Pop; One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish; and Oh, The Places You'll Go! - all priced at £4.99.

Each book will be colour coded according to the level of reading ability required: green backed - ideal for children just beginning to read on their own; blue backed - ideal for a parent to share with a child and yellow backed books - ideal for fluent readers.

Updated: 09:45 Wednesday, April 30, 2003