Fuse 8 n’ Kate: The Butter Battle Book by Dr. Seuss

“How do you say, ‘You don’t start nothing there won’t be nothing in Seuss?”

So I promised Kate that for her birthday we’d do a book that published in 1984 (the year of her birth)… and then I promptly forgot. My bad. That’s on me. So on the day of this recording (which was her ACTUAL birthday) I found one we hadn’t done before. Written during Seuss’s strange didactic era (your Lorax, your Sneetches, and now your Butter Battle Book era) we’ve never really tackled this one. But we’re sure kids today totally get… uh… the arms race. Determining how well this book has aged, one cannot separate this book from its context. But what happens when the context doesn’t really hold up so well anymore? As I tell Kate, “This is kind of the MOST 1984-y book I could find.”

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Show Notes:

We’ve never done it (it was never intended for children) but I happen to mention Seuss’s adult picture book The Seven Lady Godivas. This is what that looked like:

Fans of the podcast The Sporkful will note that the show often mentions eating things upside down so that you can taste them immediately. As such, eating with the butter side down sorta, kinda, makes more sense, right?

“And this isn’t the only scrumptious rear in the book.” Kate’s pointed out Seuss’s tendency to highlight the gluteus maximus of his characters before (see: What Was I Scared of? or, for that matter, the aforementioned Lady Godivas) so little wonder that she should be eyeballing our narrator on the left here. “Why do you keep giving me books with such delectable behinds?”

Anyone else ever noticed how often Seuss liked to strap things onto dogs or dogs toting stuff? This is essentially Max from How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Clearly he left this bad situation for a worse one.

I have a theory that the whole reason the other side seems to always know what the next weapon will be is that they’ve got a guy on the inside. One of these brain trust guys in the back? A mole. Obviously.

The podcast episode I mention about the American documents is the Radiolab episode Atomic Artifacts.

The hugely “obvious” father/son picture book legacy I allude to, by the way, is Ed Emberley and Michael Emberley. I just blanked on their names as I was speaking.

Kate Recommends: Toy Story 5

Betsy Recommends: Widow’s Bay on AppleTV. And there was actually an entire New York Times article on how they created those creepy games in the haunted inn.

Filed under: Fuse 8 n' Kate