The Cat In The Hat!

A few nights ago, the three of us were reading The Cat In The Hat together as a family. Elias received it for Christmas from Grandpa Smith, and at first, did not show much interest in it. However, after he discovered a few other Dr. Seuss and P.D. Eastman books on his closet bookshelf, he recognized that The Cat In The Hat was similar (even without me telling him!) and started wanting to read that one as well.

Elias’ favorite right now is probably Dr. Seuss’s ABC or possibly One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. But he really loves The Cat In The Hat. He walks around quoting sayings from the book. Today one such example was “What a shame, what a shame,” in the middle of our game of cars and trucks. He also has said, “Oh me oh my” and a few others. I have read these books at least 10 times a day for the last few days…and he “reads” them by himself as well.

Anyway….

The other night we were reading The Cat In The Hat as a family, and Nathan asked what the kids names were. I replied that the girl is called Sally, but I didn’t know about the boy. Elias pointed to the boy and said, “That’s Ted.” He said it with so much confidence, I just assumed that it was true. I figured that it said the boy’s name somewhere in the book, and I just hadn’t noticed. Elias has been memorizing his favorite books lately, and knows them better than I do. ( I got corrected on The Very Busy Spider the other night. I said the spider was building her web. “Spinning her web, Mama,” Elias corrected.)

So I went on for a few days assuming that the boy’s name was Ted. It makes sense.Why not?

But then today I realized that in all the readings, I didn’t think I had ever noticed the name Ted…so I paid attention. I looked on every page. Never does it mention the name Ted. In fact, the boy is the narrator of the book…it never says his name. Am I missing something? Am I blind? How in the world did Elias come up with the name Ted?

It’s a mystery. And a cute one at that….