The Butter Battle Book
The Butter Battle Book is a children's book written and illustrated by Dr. Seuss and published by Random House on January 12, 1984. It is an anti-war story; specifically, a parable about arms races in general, mutual assured destruction and nuclear weapons in particular. The Butter Battle Book was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.
This book was written during the Cold War era and reflects the concerns of the time, regarding the perceived possibility that humanity 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.
Plot
The Yooks and the Zooks are two factions of anthropomorphic birds living on opposite sides of a long curving wall. The Yooks wear blue clothes; the Zooks wear orange. The primary dispute between the two cultures is that the Yooks eat their bread with the butter-side up, while the Zooks eat their bread with the butter-side down. The conflict between the two sides leads to an escalating arms race, which results in the threat of mutual assured destruction.The race begins when a Zook patrolman named VanItch slingshots the Yook patrolman's "Tough-Tufted Prickly Snick-Berry Switch". The Yooks then develop a machine with three slingshots interlinked, called a "Triple-Sling Jigger". This works once, but the Zooks counterattack with their own creation: the "Jigger-Rock Snatchem", a machine with three nets to fling the rocks fired by the Triple-Sling Jigger back to the Yooks' side.
The Yooks then 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 carried by a spaniel named Daniel. The Zooks counterattack with an "Eight-Nozzled Elephant-Toted Boom Blitz", a machine that shoots "high-explosive sour cherry stone pits". The Yooks then devise the "Utterly Sputter": a large blue vehicle intended "to sprinkle blue goo all over the Zooks". 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", and neither has any defense against it.
No resolution is reached by the book's end, with the generals of both sides on the wall poised to drop their bombs and waiting for the other to strike. The Yook patrolman's grandson asks, "Who's gonna drop it? Will you, or will he?" To which he replies nervously, "Be patient. We'll see. We will see..."
Analysis
The Butter Battle Book was removed from the shelves of some Canadian public libraries during the Cold War because of the book's controversial position regarding the arms race. The book was initially criticized over its dark moral nature being too much for the eyes and minds of children. Dr. Seuss himself was unsure if The Butter Battle Book was for adults or children when he approached Random House to have it published.An article in the July 27, 1984, issue of the conservative magazine National Review found it plausible that the book was not more popular because of Seuss' promotion of a theme of "moral equivalence", where the difference between the Soviet Union and the United States was equivalent to a disagreement over the proper side on which to butter bread. On the other hand, Roger S. Clark, a professor at Rutgers University School of Law, argued in an article in the New York Law School Law Review that The Butter Battle Book stood out to him when it first came out because of its timing and context. Further, he noted the fact that Dr. Seuss portrayed an arms race during the time period in which the book was published made Seuss's intentions clear.