 In " How Orlo Got His Book " , he described Orlo , a fictional , archetypal young child who was turned off of reading by the poor selection of simple reading material . To save Orlo the frustration , Geisel decided to write a book for children like Orlo but found the task " not dissimilar to ... being lost with a witch in a tunnel of love " . He tried to write a story called " The Queen Zebra " but found that both words did not appear on the list . In fact , like Geisel wrote in " My Hassle with the First Grade Language " , the letters " q " and " z " did not appear on the list at all . He then tried to write a story about a bird , without using the word bird as it did not appear on the list . He decided to call it a " wing thing " instead but struggled as he discovered that it " couldn 't have legs or a beak or a tail . Neither a left foot or a right foot . " On his approach to writing The Cat in the Hat he wrote , " The method I used is the same method you use when you sit down to make apple <unk> [ sic ] without <unk> . " 
