Interesting fact: Because of a 1954 report on illiteracy, Houghton Mifflin's edu director gave Theodor Geisel

Interesting fact: Because of a 1954 report on illiteracy, Houghton Mifflin's edu director gave Theodor Geisel with a list of 348 words he thought 1st graders should learn, asking Geisel to cut it down to 250 and to use those words to write a book. Geisel returned using 236 of them in his book, The Cat in the Hat.