bartholomew and the oobleck. dr. seuss. (194)

i checked out bartholomew and the oobleck because it was a caldecott honor book.  i expected to be wowed by the pictures, they were great (you'll see below) but the story was better. i dare say this might be my favorite dr. seuss book.

bartholomew and the oobleck is the story of a king and his servant, bartholomew who helped saved the kingdom.  the king was bored by what fell from the sky, rain, sunshine, fog, and snow, and wanted something new to fall.  bartholomew warned him he was asking for trouble but one can't really argue with a king, so he summoned the king's magicians.  the magicians then created oobleck.

the oobleck started to fall from the sky.  the king was ecstatic and called on bartholomew to let the kingdom know today was a holiday.  however, bartholomew discovered that oobleck was actually a horrible substance, sticky and glued people to whatever they touched.  bartholomew ran around the castle trying to warn everyone but it is of no help because soon everyone is covered in oobleck.  he then found the king calling for help because he was stuck to his throne. the king was trying to remember the magic words to stop it and wanted bartholomew to call his magicians.  bartholomew would not be able to reach them because of the oobleck, so he suggested that the king use the magic words "i'm sorry" to stop the oobleck.  being the king, he was at first unwilling to apologize for it is a sign of weakness and very unkinglike.  in the end, the king apologized and the oobleck disappeared,   teaching everyone the power of an apology.

what a great story with a very important moral.  the life lesson is why this book is the tops when it comes to dr. seuss books.  i plan on reading this to my future kids.  if you haven't read it, make sure you do!

here are the pictures:  

(the fish from the cat in the hat!)

the butter battle book. dr. seuss. (189)

i picked up the butter battle book in honor of dr. seuss' birthday.  i know, i know, his birthday was back in march, but i am barely getting around to blogging about this book.  what can i say i lagged.  but an accidental book fee (i thought i renewed it online but i hadn't) was the push i needed to finish this blog.

so prior to rereading this as an adult, i remembered the cartoon based on this book versus me reading the actual book. i am not sure where i saw it or how old was, but i do remember that i was really impressed how it was a children's story but also had this deeper meaning (i was unaware of what a metaphor was at the time.)

rereading it as an adult, i recognized the butter battle book as a metaphor for the arms race during the  cold war.  one does not need to dig deep to see that but for a child, it would be something that went over his/her head.  children probably see the lesson of the book as war or fighting being silly, which is correct read as well, and ultimately the message dr. seuss wanted to get across.

the battle of the butter battle book is between the zooks that butter their bread down and the yooks that butter their bread up.  in terms of the cold war, it is a great example of how capitalism and communism are two views that appear to be different but at the heart of the matter simply are a means of economic prosperity.  though i like to see the zook and yooks' buttering as a metaphor for religious ideologies.  at the end of the day, we all believe in god, or eat our bread and butter, we just use different ways of serving him or it.   

there is a wall (see:  berlin wall, iron curtain) that separates the zooks and the yooks.  there is a border patrol that guards both sides of the wall in an attempt to keep the enemy out.  to protect their walls and ideology on bread buttering, both sides build bigger and better weapons, (see:  cold war arms race) though they always ended up creating the same weapons. in the end, they both create a bomb to annihilate the enemy.  the book ends with the guard of the zooks and the guard yooks facing off, allowing the reader to reach their own conclusion about how the battle will end.  i imagine as a child, i was certain that they would not drop their bombs and make peace.  and though the cold war ended up being resolved, the skeptical adult me believes that they will both throw their bombs and end the world out of selfishness.  (i should add i am ready for the apocalypse, not so much because i have lost faith in humanity but because it would be kind of cool to life through the end of the world.)

the butter battle book is an excellent book not only for children but adults as well due to its anti-war message.  it demonstrates how silly (for lack of a better word) war is and how in the end we only end up harming ourselves.  

  

love, dishonor, marry, die, cherish, perish. david rakoff (150)

since i already read books based on celebrities emma roberts, and mindy kaling's instagram.  i decided to throw another celebrity into the mix, b.j. novak.

(quick digression:  i didn't think much of him on the office looks-wise until he got the glasses, than swoon!!)

b.j. novak posted this:  

so i decided to check out david rakoff's love, dishonor, marry, die, cherish, perish.  based on novak's pic and on the  fact that the cover was really cool.

quick addition, i have to give a shout out to my friend fabian for being in the know and beating novak to posting this.  i even liked fabian's photo but didn't think about checking it out until novak's post.  damn my pop culture media obeying brain!!!

here is fabian's post:  

since i based picking this book up based on b.j. novak's good looks and an interesting cover, i had no idea what this book was about.  i had never read anything by rakoff prior to this nor have i listened to this american life which he contributed to.  i also had no idea that rakoff passed away in august of 2012 due to cancer, and this book was published posthumously.  i had expected a normal size book and was shocked by how thin it was when i picked it up from the library.  but most surprising of all, was that the entire book is written in verse!  yes, verse!  its like dr. seuss for adults! and rakoff was a genius because he made it work with some impressive rhymes!

for example:

news-aperçus 

adolescence-phosphorescence

eyesore-mysore 

bon vivant-confidant

cantilever-fever 

(i could go on and on)

one of my favorite couplets was about the conservative blanche tilly who attacked clifford's gay comics:

"how i wish you would stop up that bile-spewing spigot,

you use when you speak, you rebarbative bigot."  

cruel and articulate!

but as my SAT scores will show you, vocabulary is not my forte, so the dictionary was out to help me with some of the words that rakoff used.

paresis:  slight or partial paralysis

frond:  large leaf

malfeasance:  wrong doing or misconduct 

aperçu:  a brief survey or sketch

bon vivant:  a person having cultivated, refined, and sociable tastes especially with respect to food and drink

(i really need to start a word-a-day program for myself.)

though love, dishonor, marry, die, cherish, perish is written in verse which has a lightheaded feel to it, rakoff's characters stories are quite heavy.  the novel opens with the story of a baby, margaret, born into pitiful conditions, as the midwife saw it, red haired and without a father (he was trampled by horses) and a mother without a family.  and the midwife was right, margaret ends up being raped by her mother's second husband.  luckily, she runs away to california and finds a better life.

margaret's tragic story was a lot to digest especially being the opening story.  but as the reader is introduced to other characters in the novel, suffering is just a fact of life.  mother, lost the glamour life of her youth when her father gambled it away.  clifford, an artist, gay and found freedom in san francisco, and sadly contracted and died from AIDS.  hannah, suffered from dementia and a cruel daughter-in-law.  and josh, who lost is family and ended up finding a picture that connects the all characters in the end, a six degrees of seperation. 

of all the stories in this novel, helen and nathan were the highlights for me.  

helen was clifford's cousin.  her mother was had quite the sharp tongue and would tease helen growing up, and the sarcasm, unfortunately went over helen's head.  but that ended up being the least of helen's problems though it was probably the source of her problems.  

helen's tale is a story told before, probably in amc's mad men (i haven't watched it), and sort of in billy wilder's the apartment (i actually imaged the office set up from this movie as i read).  boss has an affair with secretary.  helen's affair went on for about 5 years (i can't imagine that!) and ended with an abortion.  due to this, she got drunk and caused a scene at the holiday office party but fortunately was not fired (the affairs were quite commonplace so nothing worth being fired over.) but what i loved about helen was that though this occurred to her, she didn't play victim.  she still went to the holiday party every year, even wore her cocktail to work so to not have to go back and forth between home.  she knew people talked and in the end gave a big fuck you to her office tormentor.

nathan, i admired as well for giving his life tormentors a big fuck you too and on their wedding day.  he was caught in a love triangle between his best friend josh and josh's girlfriend, susan, and ended up the odd man when the other two married.  susan, being the bitch that she was, something her father also recognized, made sure nathan attended and gave a speech.  i really enjoyed nathan's speech, it was based on the fable about the tortoise that helped the scorpion get across the river.  in the fable, the scorpion ends up killing the tortoise and himself because it is his nature to stab.  it seemed an odd choice at first but he amazingly put it on content. 

he explained:

so what can we learn from their watery ends?

is there some lesson on how to be friends?

i think what it means is that central to living

a life that is good is a life that's forgiving.

we're creatures of contact, regardless of whether,

to kiss or to wound, we must still come together,

like in annie hall, we endure twists, bad torsions,

for food we don't like, in such tiny portions!

but, like hating a food but still asking for more,

it bears standing dry but so lonely on shore.

so we make ourselves open, while knowing full well

it's essentially saying, 'please come pierce my shell.'

love is does leave us open to pain but in the end it is worth it than being lonely.  (this coming from an old maid).  

however, nathan's speech did not end on this pleasant note but in the end, susan deserved the harsh speech.  and i love how in the end, susan's dad corrected nathan, letting him know that turtles swim not tortoises.

nathan's speech also demonstrated rakoff's cleverness.  another favorite passage of mine was clifford's mother talking about being trapped in the valley (san fernando valley for all you non-LA-ers).

"malibu's breezy.  hollywood's shady

but burbank? he might as well've brought us to hades!

i could yip when i think of the crime it,

was moving me out here was 'because of the climate."

the fan in her hand the scene's sole, languid motion,

"i once heard it said that there was an ocean

not terribly distrant from where we sit here,

but, i supoose that was just a bum steer.

escaping me now are the details specific,

but could it be named something like 'The Pacific'?"

i was in the valley when i read it.  and it was a hot day in october!  so the perfect setting for that passage.  plus i plan on stealing mother's little joke about the pacific!  

also aren't the illustrations great?  they were done by seth.  the ending illustration was especially cute:

an enjoyable read, i now plan on reading the rest of rakoff's works.

ps i saw on bj novak's instagram that the la times review was written all in verse.  here is a link.

the lorax (125) and scrambled eggs super (126). dr. seuss.

brother bear checked these out for summer reading and since i never read them, decided to read them with him.

i know, how horrible that i never read "the lorax".  i am pretty sure one of my elementary teachers read it to me but i never read it on my own.  i knew the gist of it (even prior to the movie) and acknowledge that is is an important read for kids.  after reading it, i wished that i had a seed for my brother to plant due to the ending but alas, i didn't.

dr. suess was quite the prophet.  i mean preaching about our responsibility for the planet's survival decades before the green movements of today.  it is also quite anti-capitalism, against the abuse of limited natural resources.  i mean i don't know much about dr. seuss' politics other than he drew political cartoons and was racist (he was against asian immigration in the 40's) so not sure of what hidden messages may be in this story.  but regardless, I think it is important for all kids to learn that "unless" they care for the planet, no one else will and will destroy the planet and will no longer have a home.

dr. seuss's seems like a swell guy for putting out this message but when you juxtaposition it with "scrambled eggs super!", it is almost like he is a different guy!  granted "the lorax" came out about 20 years after "scrambled eggs super" so dr. seuss was more earth conscious.

"scrambled eggs super!" is the story of a young boy, peter t. hooper, who created an amazing meal he called "scrambled eggs super-dee-dooper-dee-bopper, special de luxe à-la-peter t. hooper".  one tuesday, peter t. hooper was about to make scrambled eggs when he thought to himself, how boring to have scrambled eggs using common hen eggs, so he goes hunting for eggs from unique birds. if you know me, i personally am all for this book! i will eat anything and everything based on its uniqueness.  peter t. hooper and i would totally be the best of food friends.

however, when juxtaposition with "the lorax", i am pretty sure the lorax would not agree with what peter t. hooper was doing.  i mean those unique birds had to be on some endangered species list so peter is essentially a poacher.  he did call people to get his eggs for him (like a poacher).  all of these eggs gathered from around the world so one kid can have scrambled eggs is excessive.  the lorax would not approve.

but seriously, i am not that person to be concern about the rights of animals that i eat.  at the heart of it, "scrambled eggs super" is a delightful read and my inner fat kid loves it!!!