The Cat in the Hat

The Random House trade edition, first issue (matte boards, single signature, '200/200' jacket), is the collected true first. The Houghton Mifflin issue is a SEPARATELY PUBLISHED school/educational edition — no dust jacket, rounded spine, no 'For Beginning Readers' logo — and is a distinct issue, not the trade first. Chronological priority between the Houghton Mifflin educational edition and the Random House trade edition is genuinely unresolved in the sources consulted (Geisel expected the educational edition first, and a 1957 Kirkus notice called the Random House book 'a reissue of the earlier Houghton, Mifflin educational edition,' but the point is not settled).