Favorites by Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel)

[I'm sorry this is such a long review.]

Johnny Depp is playing Dr. Seuss in an upcoming
movie--no resemblance yet, but great casting.
Yes, I will use any excuse to include a photo of
Johnny Depp in my blog, even frowny-browed
images like this one.

          I am writing these reviews of Dr. Seuss's books from La Jolla, California, the town in which Theodor "Dr. Seuss" Geisel lived and wrote. It’s a great pilgrimage for children’s literature geeks, also being the home of Frank Baum (author of The Wizard of Oz books). I am happy to be here on an amazing vacation. I can see why Dr. Seuss and Mr. Baum would live here--beautiful skies, gorgeous beaches, endless ocean, mild temperatures--a perfect setting for thinking things up. Books reviewed in this blog entry include Green Eggs and Ham; The Cat In the Hat; The Cat In the Hat Comes Back; One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish; Horton Hears a Who; and How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
          A friendly biography of Dr. Seuss can be found at:  http://legendsgallerylajolla.com/bio.php?id=4 You can also find a few examples of his paintings and sketches there (see Addendum). For a better look at the paintings, sculptures, and other works, go to http://www.drseussart.com/.

Green Eggs and Ham, 1960, 62 pages

My sister and I at Legends Gallery admiring
their collection of Dr. Seuss's artwork;
they are at http://legendsgallerylajolla.com

          Green Eggs and Ham, which has fewer different words in it than this review--50, to be exact--is a true American classic--and a blast. I was fascinated by it as a child and low these 50 years later I am laughing and fascinated again. The rhyming text is captivating. The repetition of the story elements (in the drawings as well as the text) is somehow pleasing to the brain--I also find this device delightful in certain songs, such as “One Man Went to Mow” and “Hole in the Bottom of the Sea.” It makes me giggle. And this type of repetition probably has roots deep in our past as a memory training device prior to the development of written language. But I’m a book reviewer, not a linguist, so that’s just speculation.
          Green Eggs and Ham also features one of the great Refusers of all times--the unnamed main character. Kids find this character hysterically funny. He’s so emphatic, yet so polite. And kids are always forced to do things they don’t want to do--they are rooting for the Refuser. The twist at the end is pleasing and funny as the Refuser finally gives in and takes a bite. The mood of the book undergoes a sea change as the Refuser overflows with gratitude and you realize that part of you was rooting for Sam-I-Am all along.
          I remember being enthralled by the drawings in this book and how they told the story right along with the text. After I knew the text pretty well I would still look at the book and go over the details in the art. I’m still tickled with the tunnel sequence.       

The Cat in the Hat, 1957, 62 pages

          OK, The Cat In the Hat is my favorite Dr. Seuss book. That darn cat barges in on a rainy afternoon and turns everything topsy turvy. This book, like Green Eggs and Ham, has a concrete and specific vocabulary and makes terrific fun happen from simple words. Taken literally, this is an absurdist text. The door opens, stuff happens, the door slams shut. All is as it was before. Or is it? The child narrator, at the end, is considering lying to his mother. This places the book in on a shaky ethical foundation!
          I think of the stripey-hatted Cat In the Hat that lives inside me. Nowadays, the Cat inside is tamed and mostly under control, but I still have an impulse sometimes to completely TAKE THINGS APART--to completely deconstruct my world. This is another developmental issue for children--how do they become internally civilized? How did my inner Cat get trained? (OK, it was those couple of times I was almost fired!) Also, kids have fits and rages and crazinesses that come over them like thunderstorms or tornadoes. WHOOSH! Then they settle back into their regular selves. The book rings true to me.
          Poetically, the book is solid. Dr. Suess wrote this book on a dare--he could use only 220 different words. The repetitive element in Green Eggs and Ham is fully present, but only for one action stream of the book. When Thing 1 and Thing 2 appear, the book moves into straightforward action. In fact, it almost seems like two different  books smoodged together. (Spell check will not accept “smoodged.”)
          I love this book. I still love the tracking between the 220 words and the illustrations. I love the natural but exact rhyming. I love the anarchy. I love the magical clean-up machine. And I love the sly indication of secrecy. There ARE some things your mom does not need to know.

The Cat in the Hat Comes Back, 1958, 64 pages

          The Cat In the Hat Comes Back is a somewhat disappointing sequel to The Cat In the Hat. Like CITH, this book has two action streams. First, the Cat comes to the kids’ home to wreak havoc on their attempt to shovel the walks at their house. He puts a red ring on the bathtub which proves comically difficult to get out (kind of like a booger on your finger). In the second action stream, the Cat introduces his helpers, Little Cats A through Z, which emerge like nested dolls from under his hat (the hat’s purpose is thereby at last disclosed). The Little Cats introduce an alphabet-book motif and at the same time make more mess. The alphabet Cats make me long for Thing 1 and Thing 2. The narrator character and his sister Sally are much clearer in this book about their intolerance for the Cat’s anarchy and havoc. The whole second half of the book is about the clean up.
          The Cat in the Hat Comes Back doesn’t succeed brilliantly in either of its streams, although the difficulty of recovering from a mistake is certainly authentic. And I can imagine 5-8 year-olds enjoying shouting out the alphabet letters ahead of time, with glee. The illustrations and poetics do not have the zest and wackiness of others of Dr. Seuss's books.

One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, 1960, 63 pages

Seal and pup, La Jolla.
Some of Dr. Seuss's creatures owe their shapes to the seal.

          One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish is utter nonsense--and the most fun nonsense you’ve ever read. The world in the book is rollicking and surprising, with one entertainment after another. Meanwhile, lots of  fundamental concept words are introduced, such as color names, numbers, time, basic prepositions, and amounts. The nouns are mostly concrete everyday words.
          I dig this book as much as any child and as much as I did as a child. Made-up words and names and animals appear and the illustrations are somewhat loosened from reality. Great fun.
          I often work on a poem until it is made up primarily of one-syllable words. It makes me boil my idea down to its most basic ingredients. Here are some random examples from my poetry: (1) Let the rain lay in your heart like a lace-edged shield of dew ("Rainveil"). (2) The sky weeps rain ("Persephone"). (3) She slugged it to her slugs with a slug of Big Bear’s best-buy brew ("Choosing Pansies").

Horton Hears a Who, 1954, 60 pages

          Horton Hears a Who is a cultural treasure. The power of one person, in both the macro and micro worlds of the book, makes each one of us immediately important. One person speaking up can change the world. One person adding a voice can change the world. There is a wonderful aura of caring in this book. It’s about being bullied and sticking up for yourself, but depicted instead of preached. And that’s how kids learn best.

San Luis Rey de Francia, north of La Jolla on the coast.
Can you see in the curvy and rounded architecture shades
of Dr. Seuss's wibbly-wobbly Whoville architecture?
Surrealist Spanish Colonial.

          Horton, with his superior gift of hearing, discovers and saves a tiny town on a speck of dust that is about to blow into a pond. No one else in his community can hear the Whos from Whoville, as they inform Horton they call themselves. His macro-world friends ridicule and persecute poor Horton to the point where I was seriously distressed for him. Horton encourages the Whos to band together and make some noise to prove their existence. (All of the Who speech is befittingly set in small type.) One tiny Who puts them over the top. Whoville is heard. Whoville is saved.

           I love the illustrations in this book. The architecture of Whoville and the style of drawing are part of my own aesthetic development. It’s still funny to me to see the Whos doing all the stuff we do, but in a Whoish kind of way--like mowing their grass, tossing a football, sleeping in bunk beds. The pictures manage to be simple and complex at the same time.
          The plot of Horton Hears a Who is compelling enough to stand on its own; the rhyming text serves as a sturdy background element that provides continuity to the action and unity to the whole kit and kaboodle--plot, language, character, theme, art. And the rhyme is Dr. Seuss’s voice, his writer’s voice. It lets you know that he is there and that it is uniquely him.

How the Grinch Stole Christmas, 1957, 50 pages

This surfer statue made me wonder if the
freedom of movement of Dr. Seuss's char-
acters might be related to the popularity of
surfing at La Jolla and other local beaches. 

          Dr. Seuss packed a ton of content into the 50-page How the Grinch Stole Christmas. He must have gotten a lot of mail about Whoville from the Horton book; they are featured in this book as well. It was fun, having read both books within the same hour, to see how Seuss develops the Who world. The Grinch, like Horton, is, should, and ought to be considered one of the great stories of our time. The Whos are filled with peace and harmony (literally, with their singing), so much so that the Grinch’s heart expands. In the classic TV animation, it is physical exertion, not the singing, that works on the Grinch’s heart, but in the book, it is clear that the beautiful singing of the Whos, who have lost everything, is the cause.
          No need to review the plot of this book. Who hasn’t heard it, read it, played it, or seen a version of it? Thematically, Grinch is about love, resentment, and loneliness. It is fun to wallow in the vileness of the villain. We’ve all felt that delicious and terrible urge to take away someone else’s fun, to spoil their happiness. But if the Grinch can change, I hope we can too.

          The key feature of Grinch is language. The rhyming and word play is brilliant and a major contributor to this book more so than in the others in this review. Stuffed the tree up. Roast beast. Cindy Lou Who. Delectable.


          I am so happy that these Dr. Seuss books were on my Eager Reader children’s literature list. I don’t know what else would have gotten me to reread them. And it has been a privilege to read and review them in the town in which they were written. I can see how the potatoesque Who architecture that is featured in many of Dr. Seuss’s books draws from the architecture of the Spanish missions in this area. I can see why he would draw them in the way that he did. I can ‘t wait to learn more about him in the last few days of my vacation.

ADDENDUM: Dr. Seuss as an Artist at Legends Gallery

If you are in La Jolla, locate the Legends Gallery. They have a wonderful selection of Dr. Seuss's paintings, drawings, and sculptures. He did oils and watercolors and bronzes and maquettes. I was stunned by the variety, humor, and excellence of the pieces. I never thought of Dr. Suess as a "real" artist (oh, my snobby self). The picture of my sister and I that goes along with this review was taken at Legends. The people there were very friendly and savvy about the Dr. Seuss works. The other artists on display were also pretty terrific. Legends Gallery is at http://legendsgallerylajolla.com.


SPECIAL THANKS
Special thanks to my nephew Jake Shapiro for solving the problem of how to upload my own photos to my blog. Yes, I probably would have eventually solved this on my own, but why bother with the excellent Jake around?

Brideshead Revisited photo

Please note that I have added a certain photo to my blog post of The Scarlet Pimpernel. It is one that demonstrates that Anthony is not as bulky as the Scarlet Pimpernel is said to be in the book. Go to www.whatsjoydickersonbeenreading.blogspot.com. Click on the Scarlet Pimpernel post. Always looking for new ways to serve you, dear readers.

The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy

"They seek him here, they seek him there. Those Frenchies seek him everywhere. Is he in heaven? Is he in hell, that demmed illusive pimpernel?" This silly verse sums up the plot of The Scarlet Pimpernel, by Baroness Orczy, pretty well. Our hero, Percy Blakeney, well known as a fashionable but feather-headed fop, leads a double life. In public he is more concerned about the cut of his coat than about current events like the French Revolution. In secret, he is the daring Scarlet Pimpernel, the dashing hero who uses guile and disguise to rescue French aristocrats doomed to the guillotine and magic them to safety in England. Parallel to this adventure story is a romance. Percy has fallen in love with a French plebian and weds her. But he does not trust her and persists in playing the fool in her presence.

The Scarlet Pimpernel in disguise.

          Much confusion in identity and motivation occur. Lady Blakeney is blackmailed and bullied by the atrocious representative of the Revolution, Chauvelin. I loved this book's fast pace. One confusion is heaped upon another. Each solution seems to bring its own problems. Will true love win out? Will the Scarlet Pimpernel be exposed? Who will betray whom? My attention was captured and held even though I have seen two or three movie versions of this story and read the book several years ago.
          The Scarlet Pimpernel seems to lay the template for a sub-genre of romance called the Regency novel, which is traditionally set between 1800 and 1820 and plays off the conventions of Jane Austen's books. The romances take place against the backdrop of the lives of the upper class--the bon ton. Balls, banquets, horse-action, spying. Extreme propriety of manners. See the bulleted list in the Wikipedia entry for Regency romance for a more complete list of typical features: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regency_romance. The article does not mention Baroness Orczy as an early Regency writer, and this book is set in 1792--a bit early for the Regency period. I think a good case could be made, however, for including her in the genesis of the genre.

Anthony Andrews as
the Scarlet Pimpernel (1982)

          The Scarlet Pimpernel was originally a play, and I think the wonderful pacing of the book can be attributed to its need to leap over narrative and get right to the action. The chapters are self-contained and all of them are 8-10 pages long. The publishers delightfully started every chapter on a right-hand (recto) page; there was often an empty page on the left. I like these little pauses. They reminded me of scene changes in a play.

Leslie Howard (Ashley Wilkes) as
the Scarlet Pimpernel (1934)

          Maybe its status as a play explains why this book translates so well to the screen--big and small. My favorite Percy Blakeney is played by Anthony Andrews in a 1982 television production of The Scarlet Pimpernel. Andrews was wonderful--he maintained an intensity behind the foppishness. And he looks like the character as he is described in the book--fair haired and just too beautiful. And Andrews plays the fop part to the maximum--he is very funny and annoying. In the book, however, Percy is a big man--tall and muscular; Anthony Andrews, as witnessed in the famous bare-ass scene in the BBC production of Brideshead Revisited, is small-framed (and small butted). Andrews works with his stature, making Blakeney as light and airy as his bubble-brained persona. The other famous Pimpernel is Leslie Howard (1934), who is a bit severe and pointy-chinned for my taste.
          Both movies feature excellent casts. Jane Seymour plays the beautiful but possibly deceitful Marguerite St. Just in the 1982 production--a role that seemed written just for her (and her hair!). The evil (and a bit stupid) Chauvelin is played by Ian McKellan, of all people, and he is marvelous. You wouldn't see Gandalf in his future from this production. In the 1934 production, Marguerite is delectably played by Merle Oberon and Raymond Massey plays Chauvelin.
          My reading of this book was greatly enhanced by the large amount of 19th century literature I have read from my children's literature list. Austen, Dickens, Dumas. Even Twain! Each of them brought me new understanding and historical perspective on the period during and immediately after the French Revolution. My general knowledge of history and literature has continued to grow, which is a nice thing. I brought a lot more to the book this time than when I read it in my early twenties.
          I recommend this book for a bit of fun. Not all reading has to be serious, socially relevant, or challenging. And go ahead, Netflix the 1934 and 1982 movies. You won't regret it.


Sidebar: The Scarlet Pimpernel (flower)

Percy Blakeney uses a common flower, the scarlet pimpernel, as his emblem. This flower (scientific name Anagallis arvensis) grows freely in England and the United States, with many stems falling across the ground bearing brown-red flowers in loose clusters. Whenever the Scarlet Pimpernel rescues an aristocrat from the guillotine, he manages to slip a piece of paper in Chauvelin's pocket that bears an imprint of the flower. In the 1982 movie, the scene during which one character discovers the identity of the Scarlet Pimpernel is filled with images of the flower. It's nicely done.


Sidebar: Anthony Andrews

Jeremy Irons (left) and Anthony Andrews (right)
in the BBC production of Brideshead Revisited

Anthony Andrews is most famous for playing yet another featherweight aristocratic character--Lord Sebastian Flyte in the BBC production of Brideshead Revisited (1981). Although on the surface the characters have much in common, they are distinct in that Sebastian is based on a total absence of confidence and Sir Percy is based on a total presence of confidence. One thing is certain, however: Anthony Andrews looks great in his clothing. Sebastian and Percy are both lavishly costumed and housed. Extravagance is theirs to command. The paths they take with it are an interesting comparison. Percy Blakeney, certainly, uses his wealth and position to rescue people from certain (and for the most part undeserved) beheading. In the end, Sebastian, too, turns to service as a source of meaning, taking care of his lover like a house servant instead of a lord. Thanks, Anthony Andrews, for being magnificent in both of these roles.(And, no, I could not find a still of the naked-behinds scene that shocked us so in 1981.)

Mockingjay & the Trilogy, by Suzanne Collins

If you have not read Mockingjay, please cut the two-page epilogue from the book and burn it before reading. This Happy Ending Device trivializes all three of the books that have gone before and insults the intelligence of the reader. I can't believe Collins fell victim to the same Happy Ending pressures that felled J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. And they all lived happily ever after...after unspeakable trauma, the epilogues of both series are crushingly bad. I have removed these pages from my copy of Mockingjay.

YouTube has many videos of Suzanne Collins, including this one of her reading the first chapter of Mockingjay:  http://youtu.be/1MY6yEt6aZs

I finished Mockingjay a few days ago and I feel confused--as confused as our hero Katniss feels most of the time. The amount of death and violence in this book makes Hunger Games and Catching Fire seem mild. Yet, I kept reading and felt compelled to do so. I am disturbed that I liked such violent books so much. And I am disturbed with the duality of Katniss's role. She flips like a coin in the air from ingenue beauty queen sweetheart to hard-bodied killing machine soldier.

Where is Katniss herself in this pink/black dichotomy? That's the question that kept me going. How would Katniss survive this role whiplash? I have felt this so many times (especially in adolescence)--that the choices presenting themselves don't fit me at all and yet I am forced to choose one. As I discussed in my blog on Catching Fire, it is the fact that these books are psychology evocative that makes them so good. I have many times felt the hate and blackness and helplessness and coercion. The images that I have searched for to represent these feelings have been violent and black. (I wrote a poem titled "Birth of the Baby of Death"!)

A scruffy tiger cat helps humanize this book.
I could write a complete essay on the cat's
role in the story.

Mockingjay finishes out Collins's trilogy. Katniss is still on her feet, physically safe, but filled with guilt, horror, and anger. She is turned into a public relations device for the districts' uprising against the Capitol, a pawn who once again is manipulated into unthinkable relationships with unspeakable horror. And the reader shares the impact of all of this with Katniss. She struggles to maintain her humanity in the face of her own participation in every level of coercion and violence. I won't go into detail about the plot...it's a war story.

I loved Katniss. I wanted to help her. I wanted to see her survive somehow, some way, somewhere. My engagement with her was one of the key factors in keeping me reading through to the end. Her fate became entwined with mine--if she could find a way to keep going, I guess I can. When I imagine what I would have thought of these books if I had read them 35 years ago, I see my teenage self clinging to these books, keeping them by my bed, valuing their reflection of my inner turmoil.

And truly, if you want to step way, way back and get all metaphysical, these books can be viewed as a hero journey for the adolescent. Adolescence can be seen as a lengthy battle for identity, autonomy, value, perspective, and wisdom. Adolescence is a fight like Katniss fights.

And, of course, these battles never really end as I grow into middle age, but I have more tools and strategies now, and nothing inside me is as serious as it was then. The important things are outside me now. And Katniss finds out what we all sort of find out (or should)--that sometimes evil is not punished, sometimes wrongs are unrighted, and many questions go unanswered. Loving anyway is what comes out of the struggle. Loving yourself anyway, loving another person, loving life anyway. Emerge from the flames and ashes still able to love.

The Hunger Games trilogy is impressive and strong. Even with all the violence and torment, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend these books. They have some strong truth in them.

Much useful information at this site, including summaries, character lists, study guides, and other resources on this trilogy:  http://www.gradesaver.com/author/suzanne-collins/