In his song “My Second Childhood,” Ehud Manor writes about parenting being a second childhood, one experienced vicariously through the child. “Through your eyes, daughter, I discover the world again. Through your hands, I learn to touch the sea waves again.”

I thought about this song lately, because thanks to my six-year-old daughter, I’ve been experiencing the joy of reading Dr. Seuss’s books, some of them for the first time. Of course, I read The Cat in the Hat as a kid, translated to Hebrew as Chatul Ta’alul (the cat with the tricks) by Leah Naor. And I remembered the sequel, Cat in the Hat Comes Back, pretty well. One of my friends had it, and I used to read it whenever I visited her house. A few more of his books were translated into Hebrew, including Green Eggs and Ham, though the translator chose not to mention the non-kosher ham, and on a kids’ TV show, I saw an adaptation in which a mother tries to convince her child to eat a spinach patty.

In the last weeks, together with my daughter at bedtime, I have read Seuss’s children’s books in the original language, one after the other. In English, his books sound more delicious. I also read a bit about the writer and realized I had known so very little about one of the most popular children’s literature writers of all time. For example, I didn’t........

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