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Comment by korethr | Hacker News Reader

I was surprised to learn that the book had been banned in some libraries, although in hindsight, perhaps I shouldn't have been. It would explain why I didn't know about the book until sometime in my late 20s.

Reading it, it was immediately apparent to me that it was a cold war allegory, which was a bit of a surprise to me. I didn't recall Dr. Seuss books having much in the way of sociopolitical commentary, and I still don't, outside stories like Yertle the Turtle or The Lorax. If the politics apparent in Yertle the Turtle went over my head as a child, it's possible that other allegories went over my head as well. I should go back and read those books again.

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I happened to read this to my 4 year olds a few weeks ago after finding it at my Mother-in-law's house. I can tell you that at least for 4 year olds, it's just a book about buttered bread.

My son asked for butter side down bread at lunch and my daughter asked for butter side up.

Yup. Back in kindergarten it was just another Dr. Seuss book. Reread it in high school and the allegory was obvious.

Indeed. To the degree that Dr Seuss' books had a sociopolitical moral, whether or not I picked up on it depended how old I was when I (re)read it and what i was aware of in the world at the time. I picked up on the environmental message in the Lorax the first time through. But then again, "Save the envrionment, kids!" was very much a part of the zeitgeist from the late 80s into the mid-late 90s. The anti-discrimination message of the Sneetches on Beaches didn't hit me until I was old enough to realize that having different skin color was an intrinsic thing that people cared about only if they wanted to be meanies, and not simply people who'd gotten more sun tanning time than me.

The idea, I think, is that introducing the concept of tragic arms races between people who are enemies for silly reasons is enough for that child to grow up, read about the cold war, and immediately recognize it for what it was.

My son asked for butter side down bread at lunch and my daughter asked for butter side up.

Best comment in this entire thread - brought a terrified smile to my face!

I don't know, even as a kid, I remember the allegories being pretty obvious in The Sneetches and Horton Hears a Who. The stories generally weren't that subtle in their morals, so this story doesn't seem atypical for Seuss.

Also You're Only Old Once, perhaps?

And then there's the Seuss WWII political cartoons that I've seen recently due to their criticism of the America First movement of the time... which is interesting to juxtapose against the brazenly racist depictions of Japanese people that Seuss also did during that era.

That’s an important lesson to remember: allies here may be quite opposed over there. And, even to a racist New Englander, a Nazi thug is both detectable and disgusting.

Growing up in the 80s this was a book I read many times before going to bed. I can't remember if I got the nuclear weapon analogy or not, but it is still a good allegory about the folly of arms races.

Other obviously moralistic works by him:

* Thidwick the big hearted moose

* Anything with Horton

* How the Grinch stole Christmas

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