The Butter Battle Book [VHS] | Charles Durning, Chris Latta

The Butter Battle Book [VHS] | Charles Durning, Chris Latta | Yep, This Is The One -- a review of "The Butter Battle Book"

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The Butter Battle ...

	The Butter Battle Book [VHS] Charles Durning, Chris Latta Good Times Home Vide, 1991 average customer review:based on 54 reviews
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highly recommended

Great Book!

Love the book! Great for kids. My son thinks the story is so funny!!

Yep, This Is The One -- a review of "The Butter Battle Book"

Well, this is the Seuss book that riles the feathers of some adults. It's got a definite anti-war theme and deals with the consequences of a military arms escalation.

Who's at war? It's the Yooks and the Zooks. Essentially the same sorts of people, they clash over whether bread should be eaten butter side up or down. The story is told from a little boys (?) perspective and is the only Seuss book I can recall that ends on an ominous note.

"Grandpa!" I shouted. "Be careful! Oh gee!
Who's going to drop it?
Will you...? Or will he..."
"Be patient," said Grandpa. "We'll see.
We will see..."

It's hard to say whether kids pick up on these various messages. My own impression is that they won't, unless you sit and have a chat with them. They will be far too busy listing to the clever rhymes and gazing at the wild Seussian artwork.

Meant for practice reading, the Accelerated Reading designation for "The Butter Battle Book" is 3.9 which means that end of year 3rd Graders should be able to read this book themselves without getting too frustrated by words they don't know.

The "Official" Interest Level is given as Preschool thru 2nd Grade, but that makes no sense given the reading level. And personally, I would say that it's more appropriate for First thru Fourth Graders.

My own two children showed moderate interest in the book and they are currently 6 and 8; boy and girl. They requested multiple reads and the book is a pretty good read-aloud. Not amongst Seuss' best, in my opinion. It IS definitely worth a read.

Pam T~
mom and reviewer for www.BooksForKids-Reviews.com

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Another warning re: young children

My two-year-old son and I love Seuss, and we love reading masterpieces like On Beyond Zebra or If I Ran the Circus every night together. My son also loves this book, but I do not. What he loves are the ever more elaborate weapons systems shown in the illustrations. He cannot understand the anti-Cold War message. (He can, by contrast, understand the environmental message in The Lorax, which doesn't require a grasp of game theory.) All he wants to do with the book is look at the weapons and talk about the weapons. I could perhaps overlook the unfortunate fact that my son is a budding war-monger if the verse were up to the Seussian standard, but it isn't. In fact it's quite pedestrian. I think this book is for Seuss completists only. Fortunately, ours is a library copy. It's the one full-size Seuss book we won't be purchasing.

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Cold war arms race

This book is a fairly transparent parallel of the cold war arms race. While other Seuss books put more distance between the actual topic and the text of the book, this one lacks that divide. This is not one of the better Seuss books.

reviews: 1, page 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11

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