We love a bit of Dr Seuss over at the Pocket-lint Towers. Keeping kids entertained since before reading was invented, it doesn't get much better than the story of The Cat in the Hat.

Well that was until smartphones came along. Now we can experience the rhyming antics of the mischievous feline via an interactive touchscreen based app. The app is a great way to keep kids quiet on long journeys, provided they aren't fond of phone smashing. 

The lite version contains the first 10 pages of the digital book which is more than enough to keep most entertained and tapping away aplenty. For those who want the complete works it's currently priced at £2.47 on the Android Market. 

The Cat in the Hat Lite

Format

Android

Price

Free

Where

Android market

Open up the Seuss app and you are greeted with a screen boasting those classic blue, white and red colours, perfect for showing off a nice AMOLED display. You are then given the choice between having the book read back to you, auto reading or interacting with it yourself.

All are equally as good, complete with sound effects and perhaps slightly overly eager American narration. Opt to read it for yourself and you get interactive text and pictures to play with. Have it read back to you and pages can either be turned yourself, or for those with really little ones, the app will just run the book through so no tap interaction is necessary.

Each page has embedded in it some touch sensitive areas that will blurt out a word describing what you tap. Touch the cats' tail for example and the word tail will be shouted out by the app. Perfect learning to read territory. 

Ocean House Media has done a particularly good job of creating a slick, smooth book app with The Cat in the Hat, grabbing themselves a Parent's Choice Silver Honour for Mobile Apps. 

We particularly like the fully interactive page approach, which makes perfect sense for those who are just setting out learning to read. It means you can tap words as many times as you like, hear them back and practice reading them yourself. Thankfully Pocket-lint learned to read a long time ago (we hope) but if we were just starting, we couldn't think of a better app for tech-obsessed parents.

Cat in the Hat? Or are you more of a fan of The Very Hungry Caterpillar?