Seuss on trade and war

Press, 3 August 1985, Page 20

Seuss on trade and war

The Butter Battle Book. By Dr Seuss. Collins. 41pp. Drawings. $6.95. The notion of doing battle over butter is not only familiar to New Zealanders, but is practically socially acceptable. An initial New Zealand reaction to the title is to believe that the country’s monumental struggle with the European Economic Community over access for dairy products has reached the realm of children’s literature (is nothing sacred?), but Dr Seuss’s themes turn out to lie elsewhere. The Dairy Board, as a matter of principle, might complain about the publication of a book called “The Butter Battle” which does not mention New Zealand. Dr Seuss, inventive as ever, with rhymes as punchy as ever, deals with no less a theme than the arms race. Two peoples, the Yooks and the Zooks, live separated by a wall. A young Yook is instructed by his grandfather: "It’s high time that you knew, of the terribly horrible thing that Zooks do. In every Zook house and in every Zook town, Every Zook eats his bread

With the butter side down." Yooks, of course, eat their bread with the butter side up. Starting with slingshots the Zooks and the Yooks improved their technology in leaps and bounds. Dr Seuss’s illustrations capture the advances in technology splendidly. The Yooks’ gun is called a Kick-a-Poo Kid and is loaded with powerful Poo-a-Doo powder and ants’ eggs and bees’ legs and dried and fried clam chowder. The Zooks come up with an Eight-nozzled elephant-toted Boom-blitz which shot high explosive cherry stone pips. The drawings are as inventive as the text and slightly crazier. The climax came with each side creating a Big-boy boomeroo. “We will see,” Grandpa said. Dr Seuss has written and illustrated children’s books with a message before. He manages to do so without being either didactic or heavy. Those who insist On getting something about international trade out of the book might come to the conclusion that the same amount of butter goes on to the top side Or the bottom side of a piece of bread.— Stuart McMillan.