I thought I’d try something slightly different for this post. So, in no particular order, I offer the following thoughts that occurred to me while reading various Seussian stories to our Youngling at bedtime. I’m going to presume familiarity with the stories referenced below.
Green Eggs and Ham
Sam-I-Am is remarkably persistent in encouraging the unnamed man to try the product, no? One wonders if Sam has a commission from Green-Eggs-N-Ham, Inc.
I always laugh at the “A train! A train! A train! A train! Could you, would you, on a train?” You try reading that aloud, with enthusiasm, and keeping a straight face.
At the end of the book, if you watch closely, the man has only actually eaten the one egg before loudly proclaiming his enthusiasm. I strongly suspect, as someone who is extremely picky and a possible sufferer of ARFID (I’ve never officially been diagnosed, so can’t say for sure), look, this guy isn’t just going to change on a dime like that. My guess is he compromised, ate the one egg, and put on a brave face before quietly giving the rest away to sympathetic friends and ordering himself some Chicken McNuggets later after he’d gotten away from Sam and the goat and everyone. That’s what I’d do, if pressed.
Yertle the Turtle
How did Yertle get to be king anyway? Was he the first turtle to climb up on the rock or what?
Yertle…does realize that he doesn’t literally rule “all I can see”, right? Yes, he can see the house and the cow and the mule, but he can’t actually tell them what to do just because he can see them, right? What’s he going to do, send his army of turtles over there to tell them off?
I don’t think Yertle thought through his plan. What happens if he gets hungry? Or has to go to the bathroom? (Turtles do that, right? I’m not a turtle biologist). Or…wants to have more Yertles?
After Yertle’s downfall, who’s the king now? I gather there isn’t one, as the turtles in the pond are free, per the story. Do the turtles live in anarchy or is there a democratically elected turtle president?
The Butter Battle Book
Did VanItch have a mole inside the Yook headquarters? If so, that would explain how he was able to copy their weapons designs so quickly.
I’m not sure the timeline in this story makes sense. We begin with the Yook patrolman, who “on the last day of summer, ten hours before fall”, takes his grandson out to the wall”. He stands silent, and then begins explaining to to his grandson about the origin of the conflict, the whole butter-side-up vs. butter-side-down deal. This scene is very quiet, very contemplative, right? That’s key. Anyway, the patrolman describes and how originally the wall between the Yooks and the Zooks wasn’t so high, and at first his weapon was a basic switch, and it escalates until by the end we’re at the standoff with the Bitsy Big-Boy Boomeroos. That’s when the narration apparently switches to the patrolman’s grandson: “That’s when Grandfather found me!” and the grandson follows the guy out and observes the standoff, whereupon we’re left with the cliffhanger ending.
So here’s the problem. When does the grandfather in the beginning tell his story to the kid? It’s obviously not in the run-up to the stand-off. And the way the story flows, I don’t think it can happen before then. Ergo, my conclusion is that it happens after, which means somehow the standoff got resolved peacefully. Or… it didn’t, but the Yooks won, since a Yook is narrating the story. And the Zooks…well, one can only imagine what happened to them.
Closing Time
On that note, I was unaware until recently that there was an animated version of The Butter Battle Book by Ralph Bakshi. Wikipedia tells me that Seuss himself approved of it. Accordingly, I include it below for your enjoyment.