Dr. Seuss Costumes

There's a whole world of Dr. Seuss costumes out there, whether you want to dress like Horton, the Cat in the Hat or even a denizen of Whoville.

Be the Cat in the Hat!

Dr. Seuss (also known by his real name, Theodore Geisel), wrote and illustrated more than 40 books for children during his lifetime. While some are much more famous than others (and thus lend themselves to costumes that are easy to identify and easier to find in stores) there's no reason you can't pick a character from your favorite book to develop a costume from.

You might have to do a little more explaining if you're dressed as a Lorax than you would if you were the Grinch, but you'll still have plenty of fun bringing these fanciful tales to life for Halloween, a costume party or even Dr. Seuss' birthday (March 2, now celebrated as Read Across America Day).

If you need a recap of Dr. Seuss' great career, the full list of his books is available on Wikipedia, and you can find information on a variety of his books at Seussville.

If you look around very long for Dr. Seuss costumes, you will quickly find that, while there are many options available for the Cat in the Hat and various characters (such as Cindy Lou Who) from the Grinch, there's really not that much out there.

One exception is the new Horton costumes related to the 2008 movie, but for the most part you won't be able to purchase costumes related to other characters.

If you would like to buy a costume, there are many online retailers that sell licensed versions of the Seuss costumes, including:

• Costume Craze, which has Grinch, Cat in the Hat, Thing 1 and Thing 2 and Horton costumes.
• Seussland, which has some fun hats in addition to the normal costumes.
• Elope has a lot of great hats, including a Happy Birthday hat and a graduation cap colored like Oh, the Places You'll Go!
• Buy Costumes has Seuss costumes and accessories.

If you want to buy something but aren't up for a big, dramatic costume, there are places that sell Seuss-inspired T-shirts that you could wear instead of a costume, such as:

• Bumkins, which has adorable onsies and T-shirts for kids related to Horton, The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish and the Grinch.
• For the grownup costume that's not a costume, check out MjC, which has licensed Seuss T-shirts (as well as many, many other licensed products.

If you want to dress as a character a bit outside the mainstream of the Seuss world, you're going to have to make your own costume. Some costumes might be rather difficult to emulate exactly, given Seuss' magical style, but you should be able to use the book itself as a guide to help you shape your costume.

You can also design a costume that's a play on a character or scene from a Dr. Seuss book. For instance, putting on a red sweatsuit and making yourself a hat shaped like a fish head would make you a red fish. A green sweatsuit with a yolk cut out of yellow felt would make you a green egg.

The whole point of dressing as something out of the imagination of Dr. Seuss is to use your imagination as well. Don't settle for store bought costumes and the same characters everyone else is dressing up as if you really want to be Fox in Socks.

Given enough time, some thorough studying of the book in question and a whole lot of creativity, you can come up with a perfect Dr. Seuss costume that will impress your friends and honor the memory of this incredibly talented artist.

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