Dear Readers,


I now consider this blog to be my Juvenelia. Have fun perusing the archives, and find me at my new haunt, here.

Monday, March 02, 2009

Literary Birthday: Dr. Seuss

I have five minutes until it's no longer Seuss day, but if you read one thing about Ted Geisel, read this amazingly tidbit-y article about the political (& personal) stories behind many of Seuss' books. My favorite one is this:


8. "The Butter Battle Book" is one I had never heard of, perhaps with good reason: it was pulled from the shelves of libraries for a while because of the reference to the Cold War and the arms race.

Yooks and Zooks are societies who do everything differently. The Yooks eat their bread with the butter-side up and the Zooks eat their bread with the butter-side down. Obviously, one of them must be wrong, so they start building weapons to outdo each other: the "Tough-Tufted Prickly Snick-Berry Switch," the "Triple-Sling Jigger," the "Jigger-Rock Snatchem," the "Kick-A-Poo Kid", the "Eight-Nozzled Elephant-Toted Boom Blitz," the "Utterly Sputter" and the "Bitsy Big-Boy Boomeroo."

The book concludes with each side ready to drop their ultimate bombs on each other, but the reader doesn't know how it actually turns out.


I loved that book as a kid, but it was insanely creepy!

1 comment:

  1. Dr. Seuss is as much a part of our collective psyche as, dare I say, the Beatles or the Stones (and this, coming from a rock princess!). I can't imagine having grown up without his ingenious characters and wonderful words weaving in and out of my life. Like most great artists, he was vehemently against the insanity of war on nearly every level. Dr. Seuss - a natural treasure - no less precious than the Grand Canyon.

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