- Seuss sought input on the book from his acquaintance, marine General Victor H. Krulak.
- Like The Lorax, the story is structured as a tale from an older generation to a modern one, where the younger character is a stand-in for the reader.
- As much as Seuss was against transparent moralizing, he delighted in obvious satire, and he wasn't afraid of being too on the nose. The Chief Yookeroo, the back-room boys with their slide rules and spectacles, the butter-up band. The "Your yookery" sign. The slavic-named antagonist VanItch.
- This book is interesting to compare with Seuss' editorial cartoons decades earlier, during WWII. At that time, he was producing unabashed anti-axis propaganda. During his lifetime, he had not just observed the kind of wartime fervor the Yooks subscribed to - he had been an active participant in it. http://libraries.ucsd.edu/speccoll/dswenttowar/
- Writing a funny and poignant children's book about nuclear war is a hell of a challenge. The Butter Battle Book is a masterpiece.