The book's cover

The Butter Battle Book is a rhyming story written by Dr. Seuss. It was published by Random House Books for Young Readers on January 12, 1984. It is an anti-war story; specifically, a parable about mutually assured destruction and nuclear weapons. The Butter Battle Book was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Image File history File links 0394865804. ... Image File history File links 0394865804. ... Theodor Seuss Geisel (March 2, 1904 – September 24, 1991) was an American writer and cartoonist best known for his classic childrens books under the pen name Dr. Seuss, including The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, How the Grinch Stole Christmas and One Fish Two Fish Red... The New York Times is an internationally known daily newspaper published in New York City and distributed in the United States and many other nations worldwide. ...

This book was written during the Cold War era, and reflects the concerns of the time, especially the perceived possibility that all life on earth 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 Gulliver's Travels, which was nominally based on the correct end to crack an egg. For other uses, see Cold War (disambiguation). ... 1867 edition of Punch, a ground-breaking British magazine of popular humour, including a good deal of satire of the contemporary social and political scene. ... Lilliput and Blefuscu are two island nations that appear in the 1726 novel Gullivers Travels by Jonathan Swift. ... Jonathan Swift Jonathan Swift (November 30, 1667 – October 19, 1745) was an Irish cleric, satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for Whigs then for Tories), and poet, famous for works like Gullivers Travels, A Modest Proposal, A Journal to Stella, The Drapiers Letters, The Battle of the Books, and... First Edition of Gullivers Travels Gullivers Travels (1726, amended 1735), officially Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts. ...

Plot

The Butter Battle Book tells the story of a land where two hostile cultures, the Yooks and the Zooks, live on opposite sides of a long curving wall. The Yooks wear blue clothes; the Zooks wear orange. The main dispute between the two cultures is that the Yooks, who live on one side of the wall, eat their bread with the butter-side up, while the Zooks, who live on the other side, eat their bread with the butter-side down. The conflict between the two sides leads to an arms race, each competing to make bigger and better weapons to outdo the other, which results in the threat of mutual assured destruction. The race begins when a Zook named Van Itch slingshots the Yooks' "Tough-Tufted Prickly Snick-Berry Switch", which could be used to give Zooks a twitch if they dared to come close to the wall, which was guarded by "the Zook-Watching Border Patrol". The Yooks then develop a machine with three slingshots interlinked, called a "Triple-Sling Jigger". This works once (Van Itch got scared and ran off), but the Zooks counterattack with their own creation: The "Jigger-Rock Snatchem", a machine with three nets to fling the rocks fired from the Triple-Sling Jigger back at the Yooks' side "just as fast as we catch 'em". The Yooks then discover that slingshots are old-fashioned, and create a gun called the "Kick-A-Poo Kid", loaded with "powerful Poo-A-Doo powder and ants' eggs and bees' legs and dried-fried clam chowder", and toted by a dog named Daniel, the country's "first gun-toting spaniel". The Zooks counterattack with an "Eight-Nozzled Elephant-Toted Boom Blitz", a machine that shoots "high-explosive sour cherry stone pits, and will put your dumb Kick-A-Poo Kid on the fritz!" (Poor Daniel and I were scared out of our witz!) The Yooks then devise a machine called the "Utterly Sputter", a big blue two-legged mech with four faucets on the back, whose main purpose was to sprinkle blue goo all over the Zooks. But the Zooks counterattack with a Sputter identical to the Yooks'! Eventually, each side possesses a small but extremely destructive red bomb called the "Bitsy Big-Boy Boomeroo", the smallest weapon of all, and neither has any defense against it. The TV special (see below) demonstrates the development of the weapon in a mad scientist-style song (complete with living goo, floating rings, ghosts, snakes, and volcanoes). The term arms race in its original usage describes a competition between two or more parties for military supremacy. ... Mutual assured destruction (MAD) is a doctrine of military strategy in which a full-scale use of nuclear weapons by one of two opposing sides would effectively result in the destruction of both the attacker and the defender. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Is a last name. ... They LAUGHED at my theories at the institute! Fools! Ill destroy them all! Caucasian, male, aging, crooked teeth, messy hair, lab coat, spectacles/goggles, dramatic posing — one popular stereotype of mad scientist. ...

At the end of the story no resolution is reached, with the leaders of both sides on the wall poised to drop their bombs and waiting to see who will do it first. The question is left hanging for the reader to answer by his or her actions, much like the question "UNLESS?" at the end of Dr. Seuss's book, The Lorax. Cover of The Lorax This article is about the Dr. Seuss childrens story. ...

Television special

The book was adapted into an animated TV special in 1989 by filmmaker Ralph Bakshi, narrated by Charles Durning. Seuss himself called the short the most faithful adaptation of his work. Animation refers to the process in which each frame of a film or movie is produced individually, whether generated as a computer graphic, or by photographing a drawn image, or by repeatedly making small changes to a model (see claymation and stop motion), and then photographing the result. ... A television special is a television program, typically a short film or television movie, which interrupts or temporarily replaces programming normally scheduled for a given time slot. ... Year 1989 (MCMLXXXIX) was a common year starting on Sunday (link displays 1989 Gregorian calendar). ... Ralph Bakshi (October 29, 1938) is an American director of animated and occasionally live-action films. ... Charles Durning Charles Durning (born February 28, 1923 in Highland Falls, New York) is an American actor of stage and screen, born to an impoverished Irish American Catholic family, which he left as soon as possible to ease the financial pressure on his mother. ...

Censorship

Custom painted display 1993, Atlanta, GA

The Butter Battle Book was actually removed from the shelves of public school libraries during the cold war in certain US states, because of the book's ending that relates an inevitable conclusion for the arms race.^{[citation needed]} Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... For other uses, see Cold War (disambiguation). ... The term arms race in its original usage describes a competition between two or more parties for military supremacy. ...

External links

• The Butter Battle Book at the Internet Movie Database