What I am reading to my kids, part 3

The Sneetches and Other Stories
by Dr. Seuss

Theodore Geisel is part of the triumvirate of American childrens' book writers, along with the Reys (Curious George) and perhaps Shel Silverstein, though each are unique in their own ways. Geisel is probably the most successful, and has been endlessly parodied, imitated and his books adapted into horrifying Hollywood movies starring Mike Myers or Jim Carrey.

In the 50s, with books like "Cat in the Hat" and "Green Eggs and Ham", he established his style of colorful poetry and appealing whimsy and anarchism that have kept kids enthralled with his books. Sneetches is the first book of his I remember reading, and it marks his first entry into "social" books with a "message". It's still an entertaining book, but to make my point: last year, the United Nations, in an attempt to foster racial tolerance, dropped hundreds of thousands of copies of Sneetches into Bosnia and Serbia. A childrens' book to stop centuries of cultural hatred. Yeah, right.

I can't imagine what the book would sound like in Serbian, but in English the language Dr. Seuss puts forth is a little macabre and even racy. The title story concerns the sneetches, creatures who live at a beach barren of rocks, trees and pooping albatrosses. Some of them have stars on their bellies, and some don't, and the former regard the latter with the same attitude the royals would to their subjects and don't associate with them. So a scam artist comes along and offers to put those who lack stars through some contraption that will place stars on their bellies, then offers the ones with to take theirs off when they realize it doesn't make them unique any longer. It's sort of like France after the revolution; the royals find out that they are going to be treated the same in a democracy as the ugly people they used to step on. Inevitably the stars go on and off as each group realizes it isn't going to make them unique. The macabre part is that these stars have to be a permanent part of their bodies, so how does it get ripped off? We don't see what happens inside the machine, but I imagine the sneetches howling in pain as they go through it, having a part of their body sanded, or burned or frozen off, then reattached. Sort of like a chemical peel. In the end, weary from the torture and their wallets emptied from paying for the procedure over and over, they are resigned to accept that there really is no difference between them and live happily ever after. At least until a Nazi style dictator comes along and convinces them to believe in the 'star-belly purity.'

The second story, "The Zax", is about the consequences of stubborness. The north-going Zax and the south-going Zax are going north and south respectively, and come to a point where they meet in the middle of the desert and neither wants to give way to the other. It is a hilarious story about the absurd lengths people will go in being stubborn, but I'm not sure kids would get that. In the end, the world just develops around them and their rigidity as a highway is built over them at the "Zax by-pass". But those consequences aren't really that grave. A kid might think that if they behave that way, people will pay enough attention to them that the world will avoid them and accommodate them at the same time, as kids are narcisstic by nature. The message really requires a further leap of logic that adults (well, MOST adults) make: that it's absurd for anyone to make this accommodation because it affects everyone else negatively.

The third story in the bunch is "Too Many Daves", a funny story about a mother weary from birthing twenty-three children who, as a result, can't think of unique names for her children so she names them all Dave. I'm sure if she had any girls she would have named them all Jennifer. In hindsight, she muses how much easier it would be if she had given all the boys unique names, then comes up with typical Dr. Seuss wordplay for those supposed names. A couple of names push the boundaries a little. First is "Oliver Boliver Butt". I don't know how common it was in 1960 to have to word butt in a childrens' book, but there it is. Every time I read the word, my daughter always says, "Ewwww. You said butt." What do you want? She's almost four. The other slightly suggestive one is "Paris Garters". Garters always makes me think of a woman in lingerie, but what it makes my daughter think I can only guess, since the last woman to wear a garter was her great grandmother. Or the cross-dresser we saw at the mall. I chuckle when I think which poor boy is going to get the name Paris. I know that one of the main characters in the Iliad is named Paris, but he was probably the most effete straight man in the history of literature. I'm sure Helen used to toss grapes at him. Finally, the most questionable hypothetical name was "Soggy Muff." I'll leave it at that, but I'm sure Mr. Geisel knew what the word muff meant. To adults anyway.

Finally, there is "What Was I Afraid Of", about a dog-like creature afraid of a floating pair of green pants with "nobody inside them" that keep stalking him. I understand the message of the story, that you shouldn't be afraid of things you don't understand, but when I was kid this story scared the bejesus out of me. First of all the way the setting are drawn it looks like a cross between the countryside where the headless horseman prowled and the home planet in "Alien." One would be scared of anything that came out of those places.

I don't mind that Seuss is trying to impart a message to children by giving them a situation or a character they can identify with, but I wonder whether kids identify not because they feel scared, but because they feel they should empathize with it. I've read another book called "Frog is Frightened" to my daughter, and after a few times reading it she requested a nightlight in her room. The book is about how a frog character is afraid of noises in the dark, so he goes to see his friends and they too get scared of the dark after telling him that it's silly that he is in the first place. Likely my daughter felt that she should be scared of the dark because these characters are, and developed the fear even though she never had been before. This happens a lot in children's books where authors of them try to create characters kids can identify with by mirroring their fears or behavior, but kids often end up copying it instead. I too remember being scared of the Seuss story even though in the end the dog-thing and the pants end up being friends. The fear is what is tantamount to any child, or adult for that matter.