¡Horton escucha a quién!

I'm quite fond of Horton and his belief that "a person's a person, no matter how small" probably because I have never been anything other than short.

EXCERPT: On the fifteenth of May, in the Jungle of Nool,
In the heat of the day, in the cool of the pool,
He was splashing . . . enjoying the jungle’s great joys . . .
When Horton the elephant heard a small noise.

ABOUT THIS BOOK: Horton the kindly elephant has his work cut out saving the tiny Whos who live on a speck of dust – no one else believes they are there! But Horton eventually convinces everyone that ‘A person’s a person, no matter how small’!

MY THOUGHTS: Got to love Dr Seuss!

Horton can hear something no-one else can. It seems there is a another whole world living on a peck on a chive flower...and they are in grave danger. Horton makes it his mission to save them against all odds.

A good lesson in standing up for what you believe in and not giving up in adversity.

I have also watched the movie of this book, and it is excellent! When have you ever heard me say that before?

I am really enjoying rediscovering all these lovely children's books that I enjoyed reading with my own children, and now with my grandchildren.

THE AUTHOR: Theodor Seuss Geisel was born 2 March 1904 in Springfield, MA. He graduated Dartmouth College in 1925, and proceeded on to Oxford University with the intent of acquiring a doctorate in literature. At Oxford he met Helen Palmer, who he wed in 1927. He returned from Europe in 1927, and began working for a magazine called Judge, the leading humor magazine in America at the time, submitting both cartoons and humorous articles for them. Additionally, he was submitting cartoons to Life, Vanity Fair and Liberty. In some of his works, he'd made reference to an insecticide called Flit. These references gained notice, and led to a contract to draw comic ads for Flit. This association lasted 17 years, gained him national exposure, and coined the catchphrase "Quick, Henry, the Flit!"

In 1936 on the way to a vaction in Europe, listening to the rhythm of the ship's engines, he came up with And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, which was then promptly rejected by the first 43 publishers he showed it to. Eventually in 1937 a friend published the book for him, and it went on to at least moderate success.

During WW II, Geisel joined the army and was sent to Hollywood. Captain Geisel would write for Frank Capra's Signal Corps Unit (for which he won the Legion of Merit) and do documentaries (he won Oscar's for Hitler Lives and Design for Death). He also created a cartoon called Gerald McBoing-Boing which also won him an Oscar.

In May of 1954, Life published a report concerning illiteracy among school children. The report said, among other things, that children were having trouble to read because their books were boring. This inspired Geisel's publisher, and prompted him to send Geisel a list of 400 words he felt were important, asked him to cut the list to 250 words (the publishers idea of how many words at one time a first grader could absorb), and write a book. Nine months later, Geisel, using 220 of the words given to him published The Cat in the Hat, which went on to instant success.

In 1960 Bennett Cerf bet Geisel $50 that he couldn't write an entire book using only fifty words. The result was Green Eggs and Ham. Cerf never paid the $50 from the bet.

Helen Palmer Geisel died in 1967. Theodor Geisel married Audrey Stone Diamond in 1968. Theodor Seuss Geisel died 24 September 1991.

Also worked under the pen name:
Theo Le Sieg (Goodreads.com)

DISCLOSURE: I own my copy of Horton Hears A Who by Dr Seuss. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.

Please refer to my Goodreads.com profile page or the 'about' page on sandysbookaday.wordpress.com for an explanation of my rating system.

This review and others are also published on my blog sandysbookaday.wordpress.com sandysbookaday.wordpress.com/2018/08/...

In the fifties, my Mom was head librarian for our small-town library (politically, we were termed a Police Village, whatever that meant).

So we kids got our literacy skills off and running when she used to catalogue books in our kitchen.

Especially since City View was in the middle of the postwar Baby Boom - like everywhere else back then - which required her little library to be stocked with piles and piles of kids' books!

And we were the first kids in our village of snug postwar bungalows to read Dr. Seuss.

We laughed. We howled. We ROARED in delight!

Horton Hears a Who was SO much better than our puny one-channel B&W TV with 7 hours of dull community programming - anyday!

The early 1950‘s in backwater Canada were tough - the postwar recovery was going to take a while - but kids back then learned to VALUE their friends and family.

I had a very good friend named Norman back in those days. Norman couldn‘t play ball or run with us - he had a defective heart.

We all knew he didn‘t have much time to live.

But Norman was the only friend I had who could talk about the serious things in life, and I had a very serious side, too, even back then.

So we would talk about life and death. The Bomb. Our parents. The facts of life. Death itself.

Serious, deep stuff that our prefab, one-size-fits-all society now rushes through in its plastic, clinical and brutal attempts to mature us.

And how lucky we were - we didn’t live in a world of socially engineered mental hygiene back then.

We were free!

And the way we felt at the end of a long summer’s day was much like the warm feeling we get now after reading a very good book. A sense of being close to our roots and to our Creator...

In our books we can find serious, non-conforming friends - just like my late friend Norman!

People unafraid of the truth.

And in books we can live in those simpler, unsupervised, unwatched times like he and I knew, all over again, if we like.

It’s all in our books.

Today my wife and I don't even have cable TV - only books. We learned something valuable from those years.

Like, for instance, HORTON’s gentle philosophy. “An elephant’s faithful - one hundred percent!”

Doesn’t get any better than that!

Horton’s still in print. Theodore Geisel’s uncensored compassion lives on. Life is good.

And you know what? The Big-Hearted elephant with Ears of a matching size (ears so acute and friendly they can detect a whole beleaguered Microdot Civilisation of Who's) still delights us and the little kids around us who may be hearing his story for the very first time.

And still as comforting as ever, is the analogy of this Big Guy up there somewhere - as caring and compassionate as Horton or Norman - inclining his ear to the plight of a beleaguered world like ours and PROMISING that we will not stomped out by any new Rampaging Elephant.

And so, these days, I always repeat Horton’s words to my wife:

I meant what I said, & I said what I meant -
An Elephant's faithful ONE HUNDRED PER CENT!
***

Folks, always remember what Dr Seuss says.

For if just One More Little Who adds her screaming little voice to our chorus of protest over our leaders' suicidally crazed Brinkmanship -

Maybe they'l! Wake Up!

And make Peace -

Not War.

My favorite Dr. Seuss!

In the words of a six-year-old: "I like it when Horton jumps into the lake screaming and he makes his ears as a bathcap, then he swims on his back with his ears." A person is a person, no matter how small!

That was so bad what did they do to my cute emo boy jojo also too many pictures

I didn't realise what apt post-election reading this would be.

When I'm reading some of these older picture books, I'm struck by how long they are. Have children's attention spans really changed that much in the last half century?

I can't recall ever reading this one or having it read to me (although that doesn't mean it didn't happen). What I do remember about this one is hearing about pro-life groups co-opting the message because of the phrase, "A person's a person, no matter how small." Now, I can see why they might've twisted that around to fit their agenda, but if you read the whole book, the message was obviously intended to be about something else: equality.

This was apparently written after World War II after Dr. Seuss went to Japan and talked to schoolchildren about their aspirations. After drawing plenty of anti-Japanese cartoons during the war, this book may have been partly to atone for those racist drawings.

The message is a good one. Horton hears voices coming from a speck of dust, and realizes that there are people--a whole town, in fact--living on it. So he puts it on a clover and carries the flower around with him to protect it. But the other animals, led by a snotty kangaroo, don't believe there's anything on the flower and want to take it away, destroy it, and imprison Horton because he believes there's something on the speck of dust. Even if Horton were simply hearing things, he wasn't hurting anyone, so there was no need to treat him the way the other animals did. (But that's probably the point.)

The rhythm in this one is pretty good, making it a good candidate for read-aloud sessions. I was not impressed by Horton frowning his speech at one point (I thought that bit of annoying writing was a more recent trend; I guess not). But, overall, the text is pretty strong and delivers a great message about standing up for the little guy, even if it's an unpopular stance to take.

Quotable moment:

Then Horton stopped walking.
The speck-voice was talking!
The voice was so faint he could just barely hear it.
"Speak up, please," said Horton. He put his ear near it.
"My friend," came the voice, "you're a very fine friend.
You've helped all us folks on this dust speck no end.
You've saved all our houses, our ceilings and floors.
You've saved all our churches and grocery stores."

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