The Butter Battle Book facts for kids
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| Author | Dr. Seuss |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Children's literature, Satire |
| Publisher | Random House |
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Publication date
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1984 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover and paperback) |
| ISBN | 0-394-86716-5 |
| OCLC | 10046060 |
| [Fic] 19 | |
| LC Class | PZ8.3.G276 Bu 1984 |
| Preceded by | Hunches in Bunches |
| Followed by | You're Only Old Once! |
The Butter Battle Book is a rhyming story written by Dr. Seuss. It was published by Random House on January 12, 1984. It is an anti-war story; specifically, a parable about arms races in general, mutually assured destruction and nuclear weapons in particular. The Butter Battle Book was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.
This book was written during the Cold War era and reflects the concerns of the time, especially the perceived possibility that humanity could be destroyed in a nuclear war. It can also be seen as a satirical work, with its depiction of a deadly war based on a senseless conflict over something as trivial as a breakfast food. The concept of a war based on toast is similar to the war between Lilliput and Blefuscu in Jonathan Swift's 1726 satire Gulliver's Travels, which was nominally based on an argument over the correct end to crack an egg once soft-boiled.
Plot
The Yooks and Zooks live on opposite sides of a long curving wall. The narrator of the story is a Yook child whose grandfather takes him to the wall, explaining he is a retired soldier. The Yooks wear blue clothes, but the Zooks wear orange. The difference between the two cultures is that while the Yooks eat their bread with the butter-side up, the Zooks eat their bread with the butter-side down. The conflict between the two sides leads to an escalating arms race, which results in the threat of mutual assured destruction.
The race begins when a Zook named VanItch slingshots the Yook patrolman's (Grandpa in his younger years) "Tough-Tufted Prickly Snick-Berry Switch" (a switch-esque truncheon with prickly burrs). The Yooks then develop a machine with three slingshots interlinked, called a "Triple-Sling Jigger". This works once; but the next day VanItch counterattacks with his own creation: The "Jigger-Rock Snatchem", a machine with three nets to fling the rocks fired by the Triple-Sling Jigger back to the Yooks' side. Every time the patrolman is defeated, he reports this to the Chief Yookeroo, who tells him not to worry ("My Bright Boys are thinking"), and three intelligent Yooks are shown drafting plans for a more modern weapon.
The Yooks then create a gun called the "Kick-A-Poo Kid", which is loaded with "powerful Poo-A-Doo powder and ants' eggs and bees' legs and dried-fried clam chowder", and carried by a trained gun-toting spaniel named Daniel. The Zooks counterattack with an "Eight-Nozzled Elephant-Toted Boom Blitz", a machine that shoots "high-explosive sour cherry stone pits". The Yooks then devise the brand new "Utterly Sputter": a large blue vehicle mainly intended "to sprinkle blue goo all over the Zooks". The Zooks counterattack with their own Sputter. Eventually, each side possesses a small but extremely destructive red bomb called the "Bitsy Big-Boy Boomeroo", and neither has any defense against it, so while the Yooks' patrolman and VanItch drop theirs, the Yooks and Zooks will have to stay underground to make sure that they don't get blown away.
No resolution is reached by the book's end, with the generals of both sides on the wall poised to drop their bombs and waiting for the other to strike. The narrator asks his grandfather, "Who's gonna drop it? Will you or will he?" to which Grandpa nervously replies, "Be patient. We'll see. We will see..."
Television special
There was an animated TV special by animator and filmmaker Ralph Bakshi, narrated by Charles Durning and produced by and aired on TNT on November 13, 1989. The special followed the book closely, notably in its preservation of its original cliffhanger ending, with the title card "The end... maybe" at the conclusion of the story. Seuss himself called the short the most faithful adaptation of his work.
Cast
- Charles Durning as Grandpa
- Christopher Collins as Chief Yookeroo and Various Yooks
- Miriam Flynn as Yookie-Ann Sue, Teacher, and Various Yooks
- Clive Revill as Van Itch
- Joseph Cousins as Grandson
