Dr. Seuss Coloring Pages

Nothing in a Dr. Seuss book stands up straight. Houses lean, towers wobble, hats are too tall and a cat balances a cake, a fishbowl and a rake all at once without dropping any of them. These Dr. Seuss coloring pages keep that spirit: curly lines, stripes everywhere and characters caught in the middle of something they probably should not be doing.

The Cat in the Hat has the most pages. He stands tall in his striped hat and bow tie, dances with a birthday cake on his hat, a teacup in one hand and a rake in the other, juggles fruit on a unicycle among the confetti and balances a cake, a fishbowl and a rake in one wobbly tower. A fishbowl sits on top of an open umbrella, three fish swim in a round bowl, and Thing 1 and Thing 2 burst out of a wooden crate with their arms wide. A kitten sleeps under the tall striped hat, a cat knits a scarf so long it loops around the page, and another cat in a nightcap tiptoes past a heap of sleeping pets.

The other favorites are here too. The Grinch peeks over the snowy mountains and fishes an old boot out of a puddle. The Lorax looks out from among the tufted Truffula trees and stands with folded arms on a stump in a forest of cut trees. Horton holds a flower in his trunk, sits on a nest at the top of a bent tree and rides a seesaw balanced by a flock of little birds. There is a tower of turtles standing on each other's shells, a plate of eggs and ham, fish leaping through hoops above fountains, a bird on many legs in striped socks, two grumpy creatures sitting back to back, a spotted dog on a scooter and a balloon with a shaggy tufted top floating over striped hills. The places are pure Seuss: a crooked house on a narrow rock, a town of wobbly towers and winding bridges, carolers in front of snowy houses with curly smoke, a room where the furniture has moved to the ceiling and a machine of pipes and funnels worked by two children. A Truffula swirl mandala and a cat asleep in a nest of vines finish the collection.

Who Dr. Seuss was

Dr. Seuss was the pen name of Theodor Seuss Geisel (1904 to 1991), an American writer and cartoonist. Seuss was his middle name and his mother's family name, and the "Dr." was his own joke long before he received an honorary doctorate. He drew advertisements and political cartoons before he turned to children's books, and his rhymes and invented creatures changed how children learn to read.

The Cat in the Hat came out in 1957, written with a short list of simple words so that beginning readers could manage it alone. The same year brought How the Grinch Stole Christmas! Green Eggs and Ham followed in 1960, famously written using only fifty different words after a bet with his publisher. Horton first appeared in Horton Hatches the Egg in 1940, the Lorax in The Lorax in 1971, and the stacked turtles come from Yertle the Turtle. Many American schools celebrate reading around his birthday, March 2, which is when these pages are most in demand.

Getting the Seuss colors right

Dr. Seuss used few colors, often just two or three per book, and that makes his characters easy to recognize:

• The Cat in the Hat: black fur with a white muzzle and chest, a red and white striped hat, a red bow tie.
• Thing 1 and Thing 2: red suits, blue hair, and a white circle on the chest.
• The Grinch: green all over. His dog Max is usually brown.
• The Lorax: orange, with a big yellow mustache.
• Horton: soft gray.
• The Truffula trees: tufts in pink, yellow and orange on thin striped trunks.
• The fish: the famous pair from One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish are, of course, red and blue.

The towns and machines are free for anything, and the less realistic the colors, the more Seuss the page looks.

Silly scenes and busy towns

The single characters are drawn large with thick outlines and suit young readers who are just meeting the books. Quick to color, above the grid, begins with:

• Horton and the flower
• Fishbowl
• Fish on an umbrella

The towns, the machine and the mandala are full of curls and stripes. Lots of detail begins with:

• The long scarf
• Truffula mandala
• Turtle tower

Rhymes to go with the pages

These pages work best with a book open next to them. Read a page of the matching story, then color, then make up a rhyme about what the character is doing: the Cat on his unicycle, the Grinch and his boot, the turtles in their tower. Young children can supply just the last rhyming word ("The Cat in the Hat sat on a..."). For a classroom reading day, each child can color a different character and the finished pages make a parade along the wall, in the order the books came out.

Printing a Seuss day

Every page is a free A4 PDF drawn at 300 dpi. A4 prints at full size, and on US Letter "fit to page" shrinks the drawing by about six percent so every stripe of the hat stays on the paper. The printing guide shows the setting. Add to pack puts a whole reading day into one file. More classic book characters are in the Curious George coloring pages and the Clifford coloring pages, and more favorites from the comics and television in the Snoopy coloring pages and the Sesame Street coloring pages.