Translated by Terence O. Tunberg, Jennifer Morrish Tunberg

Description

A Latin twist on a favorite children’s tale that is one of the first books for countless children, this story of a free-spirited Cat who, with his high jinks and mischievous friends (Things One and Two) turns the house upside-down for two bored children on a rainy day is retold in Latin in Cattus Petasatus.

This edition features the original artwork of Dr. Seuss and a translation in rhyming verse that echoes the sound of the original Cat in the Hat.

The wonderful, whimsical, and thought-provoking stories of Dr. Seuss have been published in twenty languages. An excellent addition to Seuss collections the world over, this Latin-language edition of Seuss’ timeless first reader is a welcome, all-occasion gift, a delightful way to revisit a treasured tale, and an enjoyable way to refresh your high school Latin.

*originally published in English by Random House: New York, 1957; and Houghton Mifflin: Boston, 1957

Special Features

• Brilliant Latin translation in rhyming verse that echoes the sound of the original
• Original artwork of Dr. Seuss
• Latin-to-English vocabulary
• Note on the verse-form and rhythm

Author Bios

Seven years after his death in 1991, Dr. Seuss—pen name for Theodor Geisel— continues to be the best-selling children’s author in the world. Seuss, who understood the serious nature of whimsy, offered beginning readers a fanciful alternative to the mundane world of Dick and Jane. Although he is best known for his innovative approach to children’s literature, Seuss won two academy awards for best documentary and was a talented political satirist. Jennifer Morrish Tunberg received her doctorate from St. Anne’s College, Oxford, England, specializing in paleography of medieval manuscripts copied in Latin. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Classical Languages and the Honors Program at the University of Kentucky and is involved in research on neo-Latin novels. Terence Owen Tunberg received his doctorate from the University of Toronto. He is a Professor in the Department of Classical Languages and teaches in the Honors Program at the University of Kentucky. He has published widely on medieval and neo-Latin and is founder of the electronic Latin journal Retiarius. The Tunbergs have also collaborated on the Latin translation of two other Seuss classics and a Shel Silverstein book: Quomodo Invidiosulus nomine GRINCHUS Christi natalem Abrogaverit (How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Latin edition; Bolchazy-Carducci 1998; originally published in English by Random House: New York, 1957); Green Eggs and Ham In Latin: Virent Ova! Viret Perna!! (Bolchazy-Carducci 2003); The Giving Tree in Latin: Arbor Alma (Bolchazy-Carducci 2002; originally published in English by HarperCollins Publishers, New York, 1964). Terence Tunberg is coauthor (with Milena Minkova) of Reading Livy’s Rome: Selections from Books I–VI of Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita (Bolchazy-Carducci 2005), Latin for the New Millennium (Bolchazy-Carducci 2008).

Comments and Reviews

One of the more curious literary sub-genres is that of Latin translations of classic children’s books. Over the last forty-five years we have had Winnie ille Pu (Alexander Lenard, 1960), Fabula de Petro Cuniculo (E. Peroto Walker, 1962), Alicia in Terra Mirabili (Clive Harcourt Carruthers, 1964), Domus Anguli Puensis (Brian Staples, 1980), Ursus nomine Paddington (Peter Needham, 1999), the Tunbergs’ own Quomodo Invidiosulus nomine Grinchus Christi natalem abrogaverit (1999), Regulus (Augustus Haury, 2001) and, most recently, Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis (Peter Needham, 2003); Hellenophiles will be pleased that an ancient Greek version of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone has also now been published (Andrew Wilson, 2004).

I must confess that I have not always been a huge fan of such works. One of the pleasures of good children’s literature is the simplicity and lucidity of the writing, the way that the authors achieve striking effects while limiting themselves to ordinary vocabulary and constructions. Yet words and idioms that are ordinary in English are not necessarily easy to render in Latin, a challenge that the translators generally meet with great labor and ingenuity. As a consequence, the translations themselves often strike me as more belabored and ingenious than simple and lucid, a shift in register that, in my view, pretty much defeats the whole point.

And then a friend gave me a copy of Cattus Petasatus (see Fig. 3). My expressions of polite gratitude quickly turned to unfeigned delight as I opened the covers and sampled what lay inside: here at last is a Latin translation that truly captures the spirit of the original. And what an original! As most people know, Dr. Seuss wrote The Cat in the Hat in 1957 as a book for beginning readers, with the idea that it had to be simple enough for them to read on their own but also fun enough for them to want to read it at all. He achieved the simplicity by strictly limiting his vocabulary to 220 words, virtually all of them one-syllable, and by using only the most basic syntax. But it was in the fun that his genius lay. Quite apart from his absurdist scenario and imaginative illustrations, his very use of language was fun: the insistent rhythms and rhymes of his verses make them almost impossible to stop reading. In these respects, The Cat in the Hat would seem one of the worst candidates for translation into Latin since insistent rhythms and rhymes are not things that most of us associate with Latin literature.

To a large extent, however, we do this not because accentual rhythms and end-rhymes are incompatible with the Latin language but simply because classical authors deliberately avoided them. Strong rhythms and rhymes seem to have played more of a role in popular verse and came into their own in the Middle Ages. It is from this tradition that the Tunbergs have drawn their inspiration, as they explain (in English as well as Latin) in an appendix on their verse form. In place of Dr. Seuss’ largely anapestic rhythms and end-rhyme in alternating lines, they use a line of four trochees with a very high coincidence of word accent and metrical beat (hence the insistent rhythm) and end-rhyme in the last two syllables of every couplet (hence even more insistent rhyme than the original). Here, for example, is their version of the Cat’s opening lines on page 7:

Cur sedetis?? inquit ille,
Ludos vobis dabo mille!
Cattus, etsi sol non lucet,
Ludos vobis huc adducet!

Obviously, this is not Vergil, but then neither is Dr. Seuss Milton, and it is wonderful to see the Tunbergs achieve the same sorts of effects in Latin that Dr. Seuss did in English. These effects are so basic and yet so delightful that one does not need much Latin to enjoy Cattus Petasatus. (The Tunbergs have now applied the same techniques to a translation of Green Eggs and Ham [2003] with apparently equal success.)

Could this book serve beginning readers of Latin in the same way that Dr. Seuss’ original serves beginning readers of English? Undoubtedly. Although the Tunbergs did not manage to restrict themselves to only 220 words, their vocabulary is fairly straightforward, and they provide a convenient glossary at the end. Likewise, their sentences are short and simple, and the context will make the meaning clear even to readers puzzled by the grammar. For beginning students, the strong rhythmic pattern should make this a painless lesson in pronunciation and word accent; for more advanced students, it could serve as the basis for a discussion of quantitative versus accentual meters. Most importantly, for everyone, it will make Latin fun, and that is a rare achievement. As the Cat himself says (on page 18 of the original), “It is fun to have fun/But you have to know how.”

— James B. Rives
Amphora (A publication of the American Philological Association)
Vol. 4, Issue 1, Spring 2005

‘Cattus’ in the hat popular with kids

CHICAGO, Oct. 24 (UPI) — Latin teachers are hailing new translations of Dr. Seuss books into the ancient language as a wonderful teaching tool, the Chicago Tribune reported Friday.

Virent Ova! Viret Perna!! is very popular among students who might have read Green Eggs and Ham growing up, as is Quomodo Invidiosulus Nomine Grinchus Christi Natalem Abrogaverit, or The Grinch Who Stole Christmas.

“Part of our mission is to popularize Latin,” said Marie Bolchazy, a co-owner of the company that published the book. “What better way to do it?”

“What’s nice about Dr. Seuss is we’re dealing with material students are already familiar with, so they can pick it up and read it without the intellectual level needed to read Virgil,” said Thomas Sienkewicz, a classics professor at Illinois’ Monmouth College. Bolchazy, who with her husband specializes in publishing classical books, worked with two university professors to produce the Latin Seuss books. The Latin version of the Grinch and Cattus Petasatus, or The Cat in the Hat, together have sold more than 65,000 copies.

— United Press International
Oct 24, 2003
Copyright 2003 by United Press International (via ClariNet)

Latin lovers

A dead language is making a comeback. Latin fell out of favor as a high school course in the ’70s. But recent studies show students of the ancient Roman tongue outperform all others on the verbal portion of the SATs. And schools report soaring enrollments in Latin classes. Instructors are in demand, says Richard LaFleur, who teaches Latin at the University of Georgia. Because up to 70% of English is Latin-based, “it’s an economical way to boost word power,” he says. Latin is creeping into pop culture, too. The first 5,000 copies of Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham in Latin (Virent Ova! Viret Perna!!) sold out within weeks of its summer release; a second printing is out this month (Bolchazy-Carducci, $22.50). Actress Angelina Jolie even has a Latin tattoo across her stomach: Quod me nutrit me destruit (“What nourishes me destroys me”). Now, that may need further translation.

USA Weekend
November 21–23, 2003
Copyright USA Weekend, page 12, November 21-23, 2003,
http://www.usaweekend.com

LATIN REVIVAL

Can a dead language be resuscitated? If so, who would you call on to attempt a revival? How about Winnie the Pooh? And if he couldn’t manage it alone, why not bring in the Grinch and the Cat in the Hat?

The Dr. Seuss characters are the latest in a long tradition of translating children’s books into Latin. Possibly the first was A. A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh, which appeared in a Latin version—Winnie Ille Pu—in 1960. Winnie Ille Pu proved quite popular; my copy is from the eleventh printing of the first edition, and in 1967 a revised edition was published. A reviewer in the Houston Post said of it, “One of the great cultural gaps of the ages has just been plugged by a small book which should compensate, in part, for the burning of the library of Alexandria in 640.” In 1998, a Latin version of the The House at Pooh Corner came out. Winnie Ille Pu: Semper Ludet, as it is titled, is still in print (New York: E.P. Dutton) and retails for $16.95; a revised version (published in 1987 by Viking Penguin) of the original Winnie Ille Pu retails for $11.95.

The charm of such books stems in part from the simple transformation of names into Latin: Christophorus Robinus, for example, or Porcellus for Piglet. Readers who enjoyed the book as children, or in introducing it to their own children, can face the challenge of translating familiar episodes, such as the hunt for the heffalumpus, or Pooh’s admission, Quia ursus pusilli ingenii sum verba difficilia fastidio (“For I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and long words Bother me”).

The newest entries in this field are translations of the Dr. Seuss books How the Grinch Stole Christmas (Quomodo Invidiosulus nomine Grinchus Christi natalem abrogaverit), which was published in 1998, and The Cat in the Hat (Cattus Petasatus), which came out in August. Like the Winnie the Pooh translations, they are proving very popular, Grinchus selling some 24,000 copies and Cattus Petasatus already racking up sales of 10,000 copies, according to Marie Bolchazy, vice president of Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, Inc., which produced the two books. Whether The Cat in the Hat and The Grinch are able to revive Latin remains to be seen. “In popularizing Latin,” says Bolchazy, “we want to publish books that are easy enough for even first- and second-year Latin students to enjoy. Cattus Petasatus especially falls into that ‘easy reader’ category.” Vocabulary lists and translators’ notes at the end of the books help those new to Latin (or merely rusty).

— Mark Rose
Archaelogy, Volume 53 Number 5
September/October 2000

Cattus Petasatus: The Cat in the Hat in Latin translated by Jennifer Morris Tunberg and Terence O. Tunberg (75 pages, October 2000), features the original artwork accompanied by rhyming Latin verse set to an octosyllabic, trochaic rhythm that echoes those used by Dr. Seuss. Latin students and scholars will have fun tackling this during a break from Horace and Ovid or on a rainy day: Imber totum diem fluit / Urceatim semper pluit. A note on the verse form and a Latin vocabulary accompany the text.

— C&RL News
September/October, 2000