[ Read our review of “Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisel and the Making of an American Imagination.” ]

Random House estimates that both manuscripts were written in the mid-1950s, not long before the 1957 publication of “The Cat in the Hat.” “For one thing, the children in ‘What Pet Should I Get?’ are the same children from ‘One Fish, Two Fish,’” explains Dominique Cimina, the executive director of publicity for Random House Children’s Books. “For another, we relate it to a time when Dr. Seuss was working on a TV script with some Cooper Union students about how to explain modern art to people.”

Will Random House publish anything else from the box? Loehr hedges. “There were a lot of things in there,” she says, “but you can’t just pluck them out and publish them; you have to figure out the right way to do it. And if there’s not a right way — then you just don’t.”