 On the faraway island of Salamasand, Yurtle the Turtle was king of the pond. A nice little pond. It was clean. It was neat. The water was warm. There was plenty to eat. The turtles had everything turtles might need, and they were all happy, quite happy indeed. They were until Yurtle, the king of them all, decided the kingdom he ruled was too small. I'm ruler, said Yurtle, of all that I see, but I don't see enough. That's the trouble with me. With a stone for a throne, I look down on my pond, but I cannot look down on the places beyond. This throne that I sit on is too, too low down. It ought to be higher, he said, with a frown. If I could sit high, how much greater I'd be. What a king! I'd be ruler of all I could see. So Yurtle the Turtle lifted his hand, and Yurtle the Turtle King gave a command. He ordered nine turtles to swim to his stone, and using those turtles, he built a new throne. He made each turtle stand on another one's back, and he piled them all up in a nine turtle stack, and then Yurtle climbed up. He sat down on the pile. What a wonderful view! He could see almost a mile. Oh, mine, Yurtle cried, of all the things that I now rule. I'm king of a cow, and I'm king of a mule, and I'm king of a house, and what's more beyond that, I'm king of a blueberry bush, and a cat. I'm Yurtle the Turtle, oh, marvelous me, for I'm the turtle, the ruler of all that I see. And all through that morning he set up their high, saying over and over, a great king am I. To long about noon, then he heard a faint sigh. What's that? Snapped the turtle, and he looked down the stack, and he saw at the bottom a turtle named Mack. Just a part of his throne, and this plain little turtle looked up, and he said, beg your pardon, King Yurtle. I've pains in my back, in my shoulders, and knees. How long must we stand here, your majesty, please? Silence! The king of the turtle barked back. I'm king, and you're only a turtle named Mack. You stay in your place while I sit here and rule. I'm king of a cow, and I'm king of a mule. I'm king of a house, and a bush, and a cat. And that isn't all. I'll do better than that. My throne should be higher, his royal voice thundered. So pile up more turtles. I want about 200. Turtles, more turtles, he bellowed and braided. And the turtles weighed down, and the pond were afraid. They trembled, they shook. But they came, they obeyed. From all over the pond, they came swimming by dozens, whole families of turtles with uncles and cousins, and all of them stepped on the head of poor Mack. One after another, they climbed up the stack. Then Yurtle, the turtle, was pushed up so high, he could see 40 miles from his throne in the sky. Hurray, he said, Yurtle, I'm king of the trees. I'm king of the birds, and I'm king of the bees. I'm king of the butterflies, king of the air. And me, what a throne, what a wonderful chair. I'm Yurtle the turtle, oh, marvelous me, for I am the ruler of all that I see. Then again from below, in the great heavy stack, came a moan from that plain little turtle named Mack. Your majesty, please, I don't like to complain, but down here below, we're feeling great pain. I know up on top, you're seeing great sights, but down at the bottom, we too should have rights. We turtles can't stand it, our shells will all crack. Besides, we need food. We're starving, grown Mack. You hush up your mouth, pal, the mighty King Yurtle. You have no right to talk to the world's highest turtle. I rule from the clouds, over land, over sea. There's nothing, no nothing, that's higher than me. But while he was shouting, he saw with surprise that the moon of the evening was starting to rise up over his head in the darkening skies. What's that, snorted Yurtle? Say, what is that thing that dares to be higher than Yurtle, the king? I shall not allow it, I'll go higher still. I'll build my throne higher, I can and I will. I'll call some more turtles, I'll stack them to heaven. I need about 5,607. But as Yurtle the turtle lifted his hand and started to order and give the command that plain little turtle down below in the stack, that plain little turtle whose name was just Mack, decided he'd taken enough and he had. And that plain little lad got a little bit mad and that plain little Mack did a plain little thing. He burped and his burp shook the throne of the king. And Yurtle the turtle, the king of the trees, the king of the air and the birds and the bees, the king of a house and a cow and a mule, well that was the end of the turtle king's rule. For Yurtle the king of all salamon sawned, fell off his high throne and fell plunk in the pond. And today the great Yurtle, that marvelous he, is king of the mud, that is all he can see. And the turtles of course, all the turtles are free as turtles and maybe all creatures should be. So that of course was Dr. Seuss' Yurtle the turtle. It's one of the stories that Seuss wrote in the immediate aftermath of World War II. And I think it's significant we read it in relation to the story of Hitler, Mussolini, the other dictators that Seuss had been very involved in struggling against. Theodore Geisel who was Dr. Seuss had served in the American military during World War II. He'd been part of a propaganda unit created by Frank Capra, the filmmaker, to tell America why you were in war, what the meaning of this conflict was all about. The interesting thing is when Capra formed the unit he brought together a number of children's book writers, both American and British to work with him in crafting the propaganda messages of World War II. Among them were Eric Knight who wrote Lassie Come Home, Munro who wrote Ferdinand the Bull, Sam Bernstein who would write the Bernstein Bear Books, several others who became associated with that unit all had formed a relationship during and they were working with animators like Chuck Jones who would later animate the Seuss cartoon specials that many of us grew up watching on television. So there was a kind of collective effort there that shaped in a profound way the way Seuss understood the world. And so as I talked to you tonight about Dr. Seuss we're gonna talk a little bit about pre-war and post-war Seuss because that's really in many ways the defining moment in Dr. Seuss' career. But the interesting thing is to think about the American Christmas as it comes to us today defined by really two classic texts, how the Grinch saved Christmas. Stole Christmas, I'm sorry. Matter of perspective. How the Grinch stole Christmas and it's a wonderful life. So the two members of that unit probably shaped more of our holiday experiences than most of us realized. And it's sort of an interesting starting point to think about who Dr. Seuss is and the world that he created for us. So it's my, I'm Henry Jenkins, co-director of the Comparative Media Studies Program here at MIT and it's my solemn honor to welcome you to the 18th annual salute to Dr. Seuss. I say solemn because in all likelihood this will be the last year that I'm presenting the Dr. Seuss salute. I started this tradition and just after I arrived at MIT is a young assistant professor in the literature department. Dr. Seuss had just passed away and as I was talking to colleagues and the faculty around the faculty area, we sort of realized that Seuss had been a significant figure in our lives and in the lives of our students that in many ways he was an embodiment of a particular attitude that I think suits MIT like a glove. It's an attitude that celebrates the imagination, creativity, exploration, going beyond limits. It's what I think MIT at its best represents. And so we launched this salute. The first year we packed this room, people have been coming back ever since in various numbers, some years high, some years now, well. But I've been at it for the full time that I've been at MIT and unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on your perspective, I announced a few months ago that I'm leaving MIT to move to USC. I certainly would be delighted if there was energy in the community at MIT to continue this tradition, but the energy is gonna have to come from people other than me. And so I'm hoping as we present this year that the challenge goes out, maybe someone else in the MIT community will pick up the torch and keep the salute alive. But I think that tonight is my chance to share review some of the things I love best about Seuss. And I've chosen a bunch of favorites of mine. Some of them will be stories you know already. Some of them will be stories you may not have encountered before. I always try to mix and match some of Seuss' better known works and some of his lesser known works. There was a period of time, not when we first started the salute 18 years ago, that six of the top 10 best-selling children's books of all time had been written by Dr. Seuss. Now those books have moved down the ladder a little bit, primarily as a result of J.K. Rowling, who's stalled an awful lot of those slots at the top of the chart. But it's really an incredible accomplishment for Seuss to have written six of the 10 best-selling books alongside Wizard of Oz and Charlotte's Web and a few other things that you no doubt know. The interesting thing, the Newberry Awards just came, were announced today. And Neil Gaiman, who did our Julia Schwartz lecture this year, won for the graveyard book. We're all, we're very excited for Neil. The interesting thing is Dr. Seuss having written all of those popular books never received a Newberry Award, never received a Caldecott Award, never got the official recognition of the librarians and children's book publishers. He was a popular success, but not a critical success for most of his career. Prior to the 1950s, late 1950s, 1960s, he was not a commercial success either. And the interesting thing is that really the books we know from Seuss, the ones that have sold the most were those that were published from the late 1950s into the early 1960s, a particular period of time. And part of what I wanna try to get across is an understanding of why that might be. Why Seuss's works, the thing that I saw saw on a Mulberry Street being one that is still beloved today, published in the late 1930s, but didn't have either critical or commercial success until much, much, much later. So, having started with Euro, I wanted to look at another Seuss book of that immediate post-war period. This one, Horton Here's the Who, was dedicated to a Japanese educator. And I think many people probably don't notice the dedications on this book, but it's dedicated to my, for my great friend Mitsugi Nakamura of Kyoto, Japan. And that dedication refers to a trip that Seuss had taken to Japan in the immediate aftermath of World War II, that America was still occupying Japan, that he, having dedicated himself to articulating the values of democracy during World War II, at least from an American perspective, there would be an important role for America in helping Japan move from an imperial society to what they hoped would be a more democratic society. In other words, there's a period of nation-building that Seuss found himself involved with. And so he wrote this book for the Japanese. The question is whether it is to the Japanese or to the Americans. And I think you could argue some of both. But it tries to articulate some of the values of citizenship in a democratic society. I don't think I'm stretching things to see Seuss as being, having fundamentally, at this moment in his career, a deeply political vision of the role of children's literature. At the University of Utah around that period, he delivered a series of lectures about children's literature in which he talks about it as the biggest hope for democracy. That Seuss had come out of World War II disillusioned by the failures of America to embrace the values of democracy that he thought the war was gonna be about. He had been a political radical of sorts in the immediate pre-war period, wrote for a publication called PM Magazine, which where he was the editorial cartoonist. And recently this book came out, The Doctor Seuss Goes to War, which reprints his editorial cartoons, many of which are progressive, if not radical, in their politics. And his vision of democracy was, what he thought the war was about was battling those people who would push other people around. It was very simple. Democracy was about equality. It was about opportunity. It was about freedom. So when we think about Yardle the Turtle as a dictator, there's no question that it's Mac the Turtle whose perspective Seuss embraces in that story. It's no question that this Max assertion of rights against the powerful was very close to the democratic imagination that Doctor Seuss created. And in many ways Horton here is the who was even more powerful statement about citizenship and about the value of democracy. So let me put my reading glasses on. On the 15th of May in the jungle of Newell 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. So Horton stopped splashing. He looked toward the sound. That's funny thought Horton. There's no one around. And then he heard it again. Just a very faint yell as if some tiny person was calling for help. I'll help you said North Horton, but who are you? Where he looked and he looked. He could not see, he could see nothing there. But a small speck of dust blowing past through the air. I say murmured Horton. I never heard tell of a small speck of dust that was able to yell. So you know what I think? Why I think there must be someone on top of that small speck of dust. Some sort of a creature of a very small size. Too small to be seen by an elephant's eyes. Some poor little person who's shaking with fear that will blow in the pool. He's no way to steer. Just have to save him because after all a person's a person no matter how small. So gently and using the greatest of care, the elephant stretched his great trunk through the air and he lifted the dust speck and carried it over and he placed it down safe on a very soft clover. Humph, humph the voice. It was a sour kangaroo and the young kangaroo were in her pouch said humph too. Why that speck is as small as the head of a pin. A person on that, why there never has been. Believe me said Horton, I'll tell you sincerely. My ears are quite keen and I heard him quite clearly. I know there's a person down there and what's more, quite likely there's two, even three, even four, quite likely. A family for all that we know, a family with children just starting to grow. So please Horton said as a favor to me, try not to disturb them, just please let them be. I think you're a fool said the sour kangaroo and the young kangaroo in her pouch said me too. You're the biggest blame fool in the jungle of Newell and the kangaroos plunged in the cool of the pool. What terrible splashing the elephant frowned. I can't let my very small persons get drowned. I've got to protect them, I'm bigger than they. So I plucked up the clover and hustled away. Through the high jungle treetops the news quickly spread. He talks to a dust speck, he's out of his head. Just look at him walk with that speck on that flower. And Horton walked, worrying, almost an hour. Should I put the speck down? Horton thought with alarm. If I do then small persons may come to great harm. I can't put it down and I want after all, a person's a person no matter how small. Then Horton stopped walking. The speck voice was talking. The voice was so faint that he could just barely hear it. Speak up please said Horton. He put his ear near it. My friend came to voice. You're a very fine friend. You helped all of us people on this dust speck no end. You saved all our houses, our ceilings and floors. You saved all our churches and grocery stores. You mean Horton Gasp? You have buildings there too? Oh yes, pipe the voice. We most certainly do. I know called the voice, I'm too small to be seen but I'm mayor of a town that is friendly and clean. Our buildings to you would seem terribly small. But to us who aren't big, they're wonderfully tall. My town is called Whoville for I'm a who and we who's are all thankful and grateful to you. And Horton called back to the mayor of the town. You're safe now, don't worry. I won't let you down. But just as he spoke to the mayor of the speck, three big jungle monkeys climbed up Horton's neck. The Wickersham brothers came shouting, what what? The elephants talking to who's who are not. There aren't any who's and they don't have a mayor and we're gonna stop all this nonsense. So there they snatched Horton's clover. They carried it off to a black-bottomed eagle named Vlad Vladikov, a mighty strong eagle, a very swift ring. And they said, will you kindly get rid of this thing? And before the poor elephant even could speak that eagle flew off with a flower in his beak. All that late afternoon and far into the night that black-bottomed bird flapped his wings in fast flight while Horton chased after with groans over stones that tattered his toenails and battered his bones and begged, please don't harm all those little folks who have as much right to live as us bigger folks do. But far, far beyond him, that eagle kept flapping and over his shoulders called back, quit your yapping. I'll fly the night through. I'm a bird. I don't mind it and I'll fly this tomorrow when you'll never, I'll hide this tomorrow when you'll never find it. And at 6.56, the next morning, he did it. It sure was a terrible place that he hid it. He let the little, the small clover drop somewhere inside of a great patch of clovers a hundred miles wide. Find that's near the beard, the bird, but I think you will fail. And he left with a flip of his black-bottomed tail. I'll find it, said Horton, I'll find you to bust. I shall find my friends on my small speck of dust and clover by clover by clover with care. He picked up and searched them and called, are you there? The clover by clover by clover, he found that the one that he sought for was just not around. And by noon, poor old Horton, more dead than alive, had picked, searched and piled up 9,005. Then on through the afternoon hour after hour till he found them at last on the three millionth flower. My friends cried the elephant, tell me, do tell, are you safe, are you sound, are you whole, are you well? From down on the speck came the voice of the mayor. We've really had trouble, much more than our share. When that black-bottomed birdie let go and we dropped, we landed so hard that our clocks have all stopped. Our teapots are broken, our rocking chairs smashed, and our bicycle tires all blew up when we crashed. So, Horton, please pleaded the voice of the mayor. Will you stick by us, who's, while we're making repairs? Of course, Horton answered, of course I will stick. I'll stick by you, small folks, through thin and through thick, hump, hump the voice. For almost two days, you've run wild and insisted on chatting with persons who've never existed, such carrying-ons in our peaceable jungle. We've had enough of your bellowing bungle, and I'm here to state, snap the big kangaroo, that your silly nonsensical game is all through. And the young kangaroo in her pouch said, me too. With the help of the Wickersham brothers and dozens of Wickersham uncles and Wickersham cousins and Wickersham in-laws, whose help I've engaged, you're gonna be roped and you're gonna be caged. And as for your dust-spec, ha, that we shall boil in a hot steaming kettle of beaselnut oil. Boil it, Gast Horton. Oh, that you can't do. It is all full of persons. They'll prove it to you. Mr. Mayor, Mr. Mayor, Horton called. Mr. Mayor, you've got to prove now that you really are there. So call a big meeting, get everyone out. Make every who holler, make every who shout. Make every who scream. If you don't, every who is going to end up in a beaselnut stew. And down on the dust-spec, the scared little mayor, quick called a big meeting in Whoville Town Square. And his people cried loudly. They cried out in fear. We're here, we're here, we're here, we're here. The elephant smiled. That was clear as a bell. You kangaroos surely heard that very well. All I heard snapped the big kangaroo was the breeze and the sound of the wind through the far distant trees. I heard no small voices and you didn't either. And the young kangaroo in the pout said, me neither. Grab him, they shouted, and caged the big dope. Last it was stomach with 10 miles of rope. Tie the knots tight so he'll never shake loose. Then dunk the dumb speck in the beaselnut juice. Horton fought back with great vigor and vim, but the Wickersham gang was too many for him. They beat him, they mauled him, they started to haul him into his cage when he managed to call to the mayor, don't give up, I believe in you all. A person's a person, no matter how small. And you very small persons won't have to die if you make yourself heard. So come on now and try. The mayor grabbed a tom-tom. He started to smack it and all over Whoville, they hooped up a racket. They rattled tin kettles, they beat on brass pans, on garbage pail tops, and on old cranberry cans. They blew on bazookas and blasted great toots on clarinets, umpas, and boompas, and flutes. Great gust of loud racket, rang high through the air. They rattled and shook the whole sky. And the mayor called out through the howling mad hullabaloo, hey Horton, how's this? Is there sound coming through? And Horton called back, I can hear you just fine, but the kangaroo's ears aren't as strong quite as mine. They don't hear a thing. Are you sure all your boys are doing their best? Are they all making noise? Are you sure every who down on Whoville is working? Quick, look through your town. Is there anyone shirking? Through the town rushed the mayor from east to the west, but everyone seemed to be doing his best. Everyone seemed to be yapping or yipping. Everyone seemed to be beeping or bipping, but it wasn't enough, all that ruckus and roar. He had to find someone to help him make more. He raced through each building. He searched floor to floor, and just as he felt he was getting nowhere and almost about to give up in despair, he suddenly burst through a door and that mayor discovered one shirker, quite hidden away in the Fairfax apartments. Apartment 12J, a very small, very small shirker named Jojo, was standing, just standing and bouncing a yo-yo, then making a sound, not a yip, not a chirp. And the mayor rushed inside and he grabbed the young twerp and he climbed to the lad up the Eiffelberg Tower. This, cried the mayor, is our town's darkest hour, the time for all who's who have blood that has read to come to the aid of their country, he said. We've got to make noises and great amounts. So open your mouth, lad, for every voice counts. When he spoke as he climbed, when they got to the top, the lad cleared his throat and he shouted out, yooo! And that yop, that one extra, small extra yop, put it over. Finally it last from that speck on that clover, their voices were heard, they rang out clear and clean and the elephant smiled, do you see what I mean? They proved that you are persons no matter how small and their whole world was saved by the smallest of all. How true, yes, how true, said the big kangaroo and from now on you know what I'm planning to do, from now on I'm going to protect them with you. And the young kangaroo in her pouch said, me too, from sun in the summer, from rain when it's fallish, I'm going to protect them no matter how smallish. Americans who didn't contribute to the war effort, people who didn't plant victory gardens, people who didn't ration food, who didn't save stamps, who didn't contribute twine and wire and all of the other activities that were set up on the home front to allow people to support the troops overseas. And so when Seuss refers to Jojo as a shirker, I think it has a very specific connotation in the context of post World War II society, that he's describing a time which in his life he felt like everyone in the society had worked toward a common interest, toward the common good and the sense of collective action rings loudly here when we describe the mayor mobilizing all the hoos down in Hooverville to shout to protect their community. And against it were posed is a pressure for conformity, a kind of name calling, a kind of finger pointing attitude which has taken root in the post-war society. There's a cartoon that Seuss drew for Life magazine during the same time period in which people in all directions are accusing each other of being communist. So babies are pointing at their mothers from their crib that birds are pointing at eggs that people are pointing in all directions and it's sort of the sense of society turned inward on itself, accusing itself of bad behavior, refusing to tolerate people who are different and listen to the voices of the smallest of the small. And so when Seuss wrote the story, I think what he's speaking to is that contrast between a citizenship that works toward a collective action, toward pooling its efforts to the common good and the contrast of a society turned upon itself, accusing, name calling, a series of cultural divides and cultural warfare that I think we recognize down to our present day. So I think the politics of Seuss in this book is one in favor of collective action but opposed to forced conformity, in favor of the values of community but frightened by the power of a mom. And it's a deep debate in American society about those two forces that I think Seuss tried to create this book to introduce to kids. And Seuss was part of a whole generation of authors who had in that post-war period were trying to introduce democracy to young people who were promoting the United Nations, for example, who were worried about the world under the threat of atomic bombs. And so the only hope of the future was to treat young people to embed democracy in their pablum, as Seuss put it in a letter that he wrote during that time period, that democracy becomes something that people absorb through the micro-practices of their everyday lives. That living in a home, they understood democracy because the home was being reinvented to take away some of the authority of adults and to embrace the rights of young people, the rights of children, that schools are being reimagined to have more powerful student presses and more powerful student governments as a way of introducing democracy into the very fabric of the lives of this next generation. And for Seuss, this also was a war for equality, a war, you know, Seuss had felt guilty for many of his pre-war works that have Chinaman as sort of stereotypical kids with, you know, yellow-faced people with, you know, go to hats and chopsticks running through the streets with pigtails, you know, he represented a lot of ethnic humor and racial humor in his pre-war work and you don't see that in the post-war book at work and he talks about this openly in the lectures he's giving at the University of Utah that one of the things that children's literature could do would encourage people to embrace diversity, to embrace difference in one way or another. And I think as Seuss moves in this post-war period, he's taking that ability he had from very early in his career, from the 20s forward, he was creating humor for adults. They were based on exotic creatures and strange lands and he turned it into imagining a world of diversity, creativity, a world of the imagination that was encouraged people to embrace difference, to celebrate diversity and to explore those things that are beyond the limits of human imagination. And so, you know, so I thought it would be interesting to see one of the animated shorts that he produced during the World War II period. There's doubt, this is some of the work that comes out of the Capra Unit. It's from a series of shorts called the Private Snaffu Series, which were made for American servicemen but this also involves a representation of community, the home front and its relationship to the war. So if we can go ahead and play that. So that's the kind of stuff, one of the kinds of project that Seuss was working on in the World War II period and it gives you a taste of the adult version of Seuss's humor. So up until World War II, Seuss would have been at least as well known as someone who worked in advertising, who produced a distinctive style of comic advertisements. Someone who had been a propagandist, an editorial cartoonist and an adult humorist and only would he secondarily have been known as a children's book writer. He'd only done a handful of children's book writers' stories at that point in time in his life. Indeed, by the late 1950s, when the feature rules showed and I had 5,000 fingers of Dr. T came out, the reviews, almost none of them mentioned Seuss as a children's book writer. There's a recognition of who Seuss was but most of the reviews seemed almost surprised that he was turning his attention to children at that point in his career. But the techniques that he would use in his later children's book were already taking shape through all of those other practices. So I wanted to show a second cartoon. This was from the studio UPA. UPA was created by labor organizers who had gone on strike at Disney, crossed over and created their independent animation production company which sought to embrace modern art style techniques. Many of them were influenced very strongly by children's art and particularly the way children's art styles crossed over into modern art styles. So they were interested in people like Paul Klee who was similarly interested in how children drew the world, how children saw the world. Seuss had written a story called Gerald McBoin-Boin for Radio and you can tell that it came for radio because sound plays such a central role in this particular narrative. But Gerald McBoin-Boin is a story about a remarkable boy and I think you'll see why as the story continues. But it's about what does a society do with kids who are different? What does society do in the 1950s with kids who don't fit into the established norms and grooves? So let's go ahead and play that. He didn't talk words. He went on and on. It's been turning great. That's much to the bone and quick by the number. Walked out of the way. One day he went on and on. Like a big head of power. He was telling his father, said, sense is enough. He's like a bullfab with his terrible stuff. Like a bull, he's got a learn bird with a sense of this bull. Well, we have a bull that you both look like bulls. But it's not what you think. Since here we go, I'm gonna show you Gerald McBoin-Boin. He can't have any power. So I've always thought it was interesting that Gerald McBoin-Boin comes out at about the same time that Ferdinand the Bull comes out a story about a bull who doesn't want to fight and comes out alongside Rudolph the Red Nose reindeer, a story about the deer who's not allowed on the other reindeer games. There's a whole set of stories of that post-war generation that are really struggling through metaphor, through fable, to talk about how does a society deal with diversity and how does a society deal with non-conformity? And it really connects, I think this is where Suse really starts to connect because this is a central concern of post-war child bearing guides as well. The permissive books of Dr. Benjamin Spock, which really shaped the child-rearing practices of the post-war generation, really reflected a similar view, that the child's desires are natural. Their curiosity should be fostered. Their sense of experimentation should be reinforced because out of that curiosity comes an innate sense of justice, of civility, of personal growth, and the ways you do it is to redesign the family so that it accommodates children's desires and pleasures, rather than shuts them down. The desire that's part of this democratization of the family I've been talking about. And so when people moved to embrace Suse, they were reading Suse in one hand to their kids and reading Dr. Spock for themselves at the same time, trying to make sense of what this new family should be like, what the structure should be like. And their desire to rid the world of future hitlers as one of the writers of the period put it, by getting rid of the infantile behavior, the sense of repression and suppression that led to dictatorial personalities. And that's really deeply embedded in the ways this generation thought about raising its children. So the film you'll see tonight, 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T, comes out of that same period, and indeed what you'll see if you look at it is a lot of the imagery around Dr. Terwilliger and his institute come straight out of World War II. There's a direct rip-off from Triumph of the Will at a certain moment in there where German propaganda films are sort of imitated to make fun of the inflated authority figure of Dr. Terwilliger's. And it was set up to be this idea of the piano school as a repressive environment where kids are stripped of their toys, their comics, their balls are taken away from them as they enter into this space and they're forced to conform to the master desires of this utilitarian personality. And that's really the spirit of this film but you will also see a very clear articulation. There's a wonderful song in there about the power of adults and kids. And it sort of challenges adults to not to push little kids around. There's songs about the imagination that are woven through there. And there finally is this moment where the young man stands up to authority, overturns the school, shatters the institutions that have been set up to repress it. And so we, as Seuss wrote it, you could see him moving from imagery of the war into imagery of the home. And it functions simultaneously as a retelling of the narratives of World War II including the plumber figure Zablodowski as a kind of arch-typical American who doesn't at first wanna get involved to resist participation but gradually learns the importance and responsibility of standing up against abusive authority. So all of the imagery is there but so is the beginnings of a new configuration of the family and the relations between mothers, sons and fathers that comes through. And I think that's what makes it a really powerful story. We see the same appeal to the imagination in a lot of the post-war books. And I thought I could have picked any number of those stories about kids running institutions. Seuss wrote, if I could run the zoo, if I could run the circus, they're sort of about kids getting access to power and how they would run things differently. Or the stories like King Stilts which are about the value of play or the Bartholomew-Cubbin stories where again the young boy stands up to kings. There's only beyond zebra about the kid who realizes the alphabet should not be seen as a limit point that we should imagine things that our alphabet don't allow us to talk about. But I chose this time Scrambled Egg Super which I hadn't read in a long time and I thought also captures that sense of taking the menagerie, taking all of these strange creatures that had been part of Seuss' early work and connecting them in powerful ways to kids' imaginations. And so I suspect that a lot of you would not have heard this one before. It comes out from 1953. I don't like to brag and I don't like to boast said Peter T. Hooper. But speaking of toast and speaking of kitchens and ketchup and cake and kettles and stoes and the stuff people bake. Well, I don't like to brag, but I'm telling you Liz that speaking of cooks I'm the best that there is. By only last Tuesday when mother was out I really cooked something worth talking about. You see, I was sitting there resting my legs and I happened to pick up a couple of eggs and I sort of got thinking. It's sort of a shame that scrambled eggs always taste always the same. And because ever since goodness knows when they've always been made from the eggs of a hen. Just a plain common hen. What a dumb thing to use when all of the other fine eggs you could choose. And so I decided that just for a change I'd scramble a new kind of egg on the range. Some fine, fancy eggs that no other cook cooks like the eggs of the ruffle-necked salamagooks. Salamagooks, say that should be good. So I went out and found some as quick as I could and while I was lugging them back to the house I happened to notice a tizzle-topped grouse on a tree down the street. And I knew from her looks that her egg and the egg of the salamagooks ought to mix mighty well, ought to taste simply super when scrambled together by Peter T. Hooper. So I took these eggs home and I frizzled them up and I added some sugar, two thirds of a cup, and a small pinch of pepper and also a pound of horseradish sauce that was sitting around. And also some nuts. Then I tasted the stuff and it tasted quite fine, but not quite fine enough to make the best scramble that ever has been made. A cook has to cook the best eggs ever laid. And so I drove to the country quite rather far out and I studied the birds that were flitting about I looked with great care at a mop-noodled finch, I looked at a beagle-breaked bald-headed grinch, and also I looked at a shade-roosting quail who was roasting right under a lasso-lax tail. And I looked at a spritz and a flannel-winged jay, but I couldn't just stop. I kept right on my way because they didn't have eggs. They weren't lying, laying that day. Then suddenly, boy, up that hill, a short space, birds! They were laying all over the place. Great, pappy, gay families with uncles and cousins, all lying, fine, strictly fresh eggs by the dozens. Why, I'd have to scramble more super than super. Scramble eggs, super, de-dooper, de-booper, special deluxe, a la Peter T. Hooper. I picked out the eggs in a most careful way. I only picked those that I knew were grade A. I only took eggs from the very best fowls, so I didn't take eggs from the twiddler owls because I knew that the eggs of those fellows who twiddle taste sort of like dust from inside a bass fiddle. I went for the kind that were mellow and sweet and the world's sweetest eggs are the eggs of the quit, which is due to their very sweet trout, which they eat. And those trout, well, they're sweet because they only eat wogs. And wogs, after all, are the world's sweetest frogs. And the reason they're sweet is whenever they launch, it's always the world's sweetest bees that they munch. And the reason though bees can taste sweeter than these, they only eat blossoms of beaselnut trees. And these beaselnut blossoms are sweeter than sweet. And that's why I nabbed several eggs from the quit. But I passed up the eggs of a bird called a strudel, who sort of a stork with fur like a poodle. But they say, for they say the eggs of this kind of a stork are gooey like glue and they stick to your fork. And the yulks of these eggs, I'm told, taste like fleece. Well, the whites taste very like very old bicycle grease. The places I hiked to, the roads that I rambled to find the best eggs that had ever been scrambled. I hunted new birds along wild tangled trails through gullies and gulches, down dingles and dales. I wiggled my way and I crawled at a creep through a forest of ferns that were 40 miles deep. And I mushed through the brush till I found the fine quigger, whose eggs are as big as a pinhead, no bigger. Then I went for the eggs of a long-legged quong. Now this quong, well, she's built just a little bit wrong. For eggs, the legs are so terribly, terribly long that she has to lay eggs 20 feet in the air and they drop with a plop to the ground from up there. So unless you can catch them before the eggs crash, you haven't got eggs, you've got long-legged hash. Eggs I collected, 302, but I needed some more and I suddenly knew that the job was too big for one fellow to do. So I telegraphed north to some friends named near Frizzul, which is 10 miles or so just beyond the North Pole, and they all of them jumped in their catamus slide, which is sort of a boat made of sea leopard tide, which they sailed out the sea to go looking for gris, grice, which is sort of a bird which lays eggs on the ice, which they grabbed with a tool which is known as a squidditch, cause those eggs are too cold to be touched without which. And while they were sending those eggs I got word of, a bird that does something that's almost unheard of, it's hard to believe, but this bird called the pelf lays eggs that are three times as big as herself. How the pelf ever learned such a difficult trick, I've never found out, but I found that egg quick and I managed to get it down out of the nest and home to the kitchen along with the rest, but I didn't stop then, cause I knew of some ducks by the name of the single file Zumsian Zucks, who stroll single file through the mountains of Zums, quite oddly enough, with their eggs on their thumbs, and some fellows in Zums where I happened to know, just happened to capture a thousand or so, and they wrapped up their eggs and they mailed them by air, mark special delivery, handle with care. I needed more helpers and so for assistance I called up a fellow named Ali, long distance, and Ali, as soon as he hung up the phone, picked up a small basket and started alone to climb the steep crags and the jags of Mount Stroku, to fetch me the egg of a Mount Stroku cuckoo. Now these Mount Stroku cuckoos are rather small gals, but these Mount Stroku cuckoos have lots of big pals. They dive from the skies with wild cackling shrieks and they jabbed at his legs and they jabbed at his cheeks with their yammering, clamoring, hammering beaks, but Ali, poor brave Ali, he fought his way through and he sent me that egg as I knew that he would do. For my scrambled eggs, super-de-duper-de-booper, special deluxe a la Peter T. Hooper. In the meanwhile, of course, I was keeping real busy collecting the eggs of the three eyelashed tizzy. They're quite hard to reach, so I strode on the top of a hammock a-k-sh-t-em, a-k-sh-nam, a-k-sh-nop. Then I found a great flock of southwest-facing cranes and I guess they got something that's wrong for their brains, for this kind of crane when she's guarding her nest will always stand facing precisely southwest, so to get at those eggs wasn't hard in the least. I came from behind, from precisely northeast and I captured the egg of a grickly gracas who lays up high in a prickly cactus. Then I went for some ziffs. They're exactly like zuffs, but the ziffs live on cliffs and the zuffs live on bluffs and seeing how bluffs are exactly like cliffs, it's mighty hard telling the zuffs from the ziffs. But I know that the egg that I got from the bluffs, if it wasn't a ziffs from the cliffs, was a zuffs. Now I needed an egg of a moth watching sniff who's a bird who's so big he scares people to death and this awfully big bird, well, the reason they name her the moth watching sniff is because that's how they tame her. She likes watching moths, sort of quiets her mind and while she is watching you sneak up behind and you yank out her egg. So I got one, of course, with the help of some friends and a very fast horse. If you wanna get eggs you can't buy at a store, you have to do things never thought of before. Well, to get at the eggs of one very small doff, you had to pry all of one mountaintop off. Then I heard of some birds who lay eggs, if you please, that taste like the air and the holes and Swiss cheese. And they live in big zanzibars, zanzibar trees. So I ordered a tree full, the job was immense but I needed those eggs and said hang the expense. I needed one more and I saved it for last, the egg of the frightful bombastic aghast and that bird is so mean and that bird is so fast that I had to escape on a jillica jast, a fleet-footed beast who could run like a deer would look sort of different, you steer him by ear. All through with the searching, all through with the looking, I had all I needed and now for the cooking, I rushed to the kitchen, the place where I'd stacked them, I rolled up my sleeves, I unpacked them and cracked them and chucked them and chucked them in nine-ine pans and I mixed in some beans, I used 55 cans, then I mixed in some ginger, nine prunes and three figs and parsley, quite sparsely, just 22 sprigs. And then I added six cinnamon sticks and a clove and my scramble was ready to go on the stove. You know, and you know how they tasted? They tasted just like, they tasted exactly, exactly just like scrambled egg super de-duper de-booper, special deluxe a la Peter T. Hooper. Only two or three of you are of that age, remember those books very vividly and the rest of you probably managed to escape Sally, Dick and Jane almost entirely. So in an act of cultural vengeance, I thought it would be useful to share Sally, Dick and Jane with this crowd and if we're gonna put on video, a documentary, we staged what took place in classrooms when Sally, Dick and Jane books were being taught. And work, and work, and work, and work, and work. Today, we are going to be a very interesting book. It is about a boy, a girl and their baby sister. Well, Sally had a favorite to watch. It was a toy champion. Here's a picture of her. Here is a picture of her. She called her a baby girl, it's her. One day, one day the Sally went for a walk in the park and they came there. She wanted to talk to the table, as if it were real. She would have introduced these works to children in a story context. That's what they ever read in the story. Hi, who worked? So we went to the fountain to get a drink, and jump up, down. It's a very easy way out of the style. But what you see here, what was his name? Well, we know his name is Tim, and this word, which is the name of the story, says Tim. So the child is getting peace associating with the object. So there's meaning in this word for it. It's not just ordered sitting there. This word means Tim. She will be there when she's there. So the number of children, say 80, that each of them had a kind of hand around it, were their books, and yours they would be reading. They would not be reading from the label, or from one of the pre-privileged. And by having the children around her, she was in close contact with the museum. And she could more readily assess if her certain children were having different cognizance than the cognizance were. So she was very close to them in that respect. Okay, let's... I will take you out of your mercy. I will show mercy and take you out of your misery, I mean. But I wanted to sort of set that up, because in a sense, that's what Cat in the Hat was written in reaction to. The John Hershey, the journalist, had written in Life Magazine a piece about why Johnny couldn't read. And one of his answers was that Johnny was bored silly. That this technique that had been used that was so repetitive and so literal minded, and if we continue, there's a whole thing about how the picture had to look exactly like the thing it represented. There could be no room for confusion, that realism was the only acceptable aesthetic for children's literature and that this was what dominated schools and libraries in many regards. The dominant aesthetic is a very realist one. And Hershey said, what if the best writers, the best writers of whimsy and nonsense of the imagination wrote books for children to read in schools? And he specifically called out Dr. Seuss and said, Dr. Seuss should not just be writing for older kids, but should be writing for beginning readers to get those kids to engage in literature in a new way. So Seuss took on the challenge and he struggled quite a bit, because when he went to the publishers for young children, there was a lot of resistance to the idea that someone like Seuss could write a book for a beginning reader. But there was also a kind of school board dictate that said there's a list of about 200 words and you had to use those words and only those words in telling the story. So all of those imaginary phrases that Seuss created in those books had to go out the window. He couldn't make up silly words with silly sounds and strange consonants. He had to actually use an existing vocabulary of words. And at least as he tells the story, as he played around with the list, the first two words he came up with that rhymed and made sense to him was the cat in the hat. If it would emerge, it really was going to be his chance to tell a story. Now they've just published a really nice book, The Annotated Cat in the Hat, which takes page by page and offers commentary on the story. I'm not going to go through all the commentary here, but I thought I would share I would break it up a little bit with some pieces of commentary as I read. But I think the thing to think about is I wanted to share some of the pieces from there. The reference of Sally Dick and Jane, the sort of domestic setting, that phrase up, up, up to come back, to sort of think about how all of those images come back in this book that Seuss created. The sun did not shine. It was too wet to play. So we sat in the house all that cold, cold, wet day. I sat there with Sally. We sat there, we too. And I said, how I wish we had something to do. Too wet to go out and too cold to play ball. So we sat in the house and we did nothing at all. So all we could do was to sit, sit, sit, sit. And we did not like it. Not one little bit. And then something went bump. How the bump made us jump. We looked and then we saw him step in on the mat. We looked and we saw him the cat and the hat. And he said to us, why do you sit there like that? I know it is wet and the sun is not sunny. But we have come, we can have lots of good fun that is funny. I know some good games we could play. I know some new tricks, said the cat and the hat. A lot of good tricks. I'll show them to you. Then Sally and I did not know what to say. Our mother was out of the house for the day. But our fish said, no, no, make that cat go away. Tell the cat and the hat. You do not want to play. He should not be here. He should not be about. He should not be here when your mother is out. Now, now, have no fear. Have no fear, said the cat. My tricks are not bad, said the cat and the hat. Why we can have lots of good fun, I call up, up, up with the fish. Put me down, said the fish. There is no fun at all. Put me down, said the fish. I do not wish to fall. Have no fear, said the cat. I will not let you fall. I will hold you up high as I stand on a ball with a book in one hand and a cup on my hat. But that is not all I can do, said the cat. Look at me, look at me now, said the cat. With a cup and a cake on top of my hat. I can hold up two books. I can hold up the fish and a little toy ship and look on a dish. And look, I can jump up and down on the ball. But that is not all, oh no, that is not all. Look at me, look at me. Look at me now. It is fun to have fun. And you have to know how. I can hold up the cup and the milk and the cake. I can hold up these books and the fish on a rake. I can hold up the toy ship and a little toy man. And look, with my tail, I can hold a red fan. I can fan with a fan as I hop on the ball. And that is not all. Oh no, that is not all. And he fell on his head. He came down with a bump from up there on the ball. And Sally and I, we saw all the things fall. And our fish came down too. He fell into a pond. He said, do I like this? Oh no, I do not. This is not a good game. Said our fish, is he lit? No, I do not like it. Not one little bit. Now look what you did, said the fish to the cat. Now look at this house. Look at this. Look at that. You sank our toy ship. Sank it deep in the cake. You shook up our house and you bent our new rake. You should not be here when our mother is not. You get out of this house, said the fish in the pot. But I like it here. Oh, I like it a lot, said the cat in the hat. To the fish in the pot. I will not go away. I do not wish to go. And so, said the cat in the hat. So, so, so. I will show you another good game that I know. And then he ran out and then fast as a fox, the cat in the hat came back in with a box. A big red wood box. He was shot with a hook. Now look at this trick, said the cat. Take a look. Then he got up on top with the tip of this hat. I call this game, find in a box. Said the cat. In this box are two things I will show to you now. You will like these two things. Said the cat with a bow. I will pick up the hook. You will see something new. Two things. And I call them thing one and thing two. These things will not bite you. They want to have fun. Then out of the box came thing two and thing one. And they ran up, ran to us fast. They said, how do you do? Would you like to shake hands with thing one and thing two? And Sally and I did not know what to do. So we had to shake hands with thing one and thing two. We shook their two hands. But our fish said, no, no. Those things should not be in this house. Make them go. They should not be here when your mother is not. Put them out. Put them out. Said the fish in the pot. Have no fear, little fish said the cat in the hat. These things are good things. And he gave them a pat. They're tame. Oh, so tame. They've come here to play. They will give you some fun on this wet, wet, wet day. Now here's the game that they like. Said the cat. They like to fly kites at the cat in the hat. They should not fly kites in a house. They should not. All the things they will bump. All the things they will hit. Oh, well, they like it. Not one little bit. Then Sally and I saw them run down the hall. We saw those two things bump their kites on the wall. Bump, bump, bump, bump. Down the wall in the hall. Thing two and thing one. They ran up. They ran down. On the string of one kite we saw mother's new gown. Her gown with the dots that are pink, then we saw one kite bump on the head of her bed. Then those two things ran about with big bumps, jumps and kicks and with hops and big thumps and all kinds of bad tricks. And I said, I do not like the way that they play. If mother could see this, oh, what would she say? Then our fish said, look, look, and our fish shook with fear. Your mother's on her way home. Do you hear? What will she do to us? What will she say? Oh, she will not like it to find us this way. So do something fast, said the fish. Do you hear? I saw your mother. Your mother is near. So as fast as you can, think of something to do. You'll have to get rid of thing one and thing two. So as fast as I could, I went after my net and I said, with my net I can get them. I bet, I bet with my net I can get these things yet. Then I let down my net. It came down with a plop and I had them at last. These two things had to stop. Then I said to the cat, now you do as I say. You pack up those things and you take them away. Oh, dear, said the cat. You did not like our game. Oh, dear, what a shame. What a shame. What a shame. Then he shut up the things in the box with a hook and the cat went away with a sad kind of look. That is good, said the fish. He has gone away. Yes, but your mother will come. She'll find this big mess. This is so big and so deep and so tall. We cannot pick it up. There's no way at all. And then, who came back in the house, why the cat? Have no fear of this mess of the cat in the hat. I always pick up my play things and so I'll show you another good trick that I know. Then we saw him pick up all the things that were down. He picked up the cake and the rake and the gown and the milk and the strings and the books and the dish and the fan and the cup and the ship and the fish and he put them away and then he said, that is that. And then he was gone with the tip of his hat. Then our mother came in and she said to us too, did you have any fun? Tell me, what did you do? And Sally and I did not know what to say. Should we tell her the things that went on there that day? Should we tell her about it? Now what should we do? Now what would you do if your mother asked you? And I've always loved that last passage which sort of gives permission for kids to have fantasy lives, to have secrets, to have a world of their own that not necessarily exposed to adults. And you picture this read in school by a teacher, read at home by a parent or read by the kid himself. It seems to permit, which is the classic notion of a permissive environment, to permit, to allow, to tolerate, to facilitate. Kids having an imaginary life, kids being creative. And you read it alongside that Sally Dick and Jane passage and you sort of realize what an act of liberation that writing was. How transgressive it was in terms of taking that limited vocabulary and using it like a sauna as a set of constraints to create within, as a way to invent and articulate something different for the imaginary lives of kids. And that's what I think the Dr. Seuss books meant for my generation, which was the first to read them growing up as they were coming out every year at Christmas, a new Dr. Seuss book. And that is really the heart of why I've drawn toward this sort of celebration of Dr. Seuss and his work. I think there are many values there that are worth holding on to as we move into the future, as we create a future at MIT and we create a future that goes on beyond Zebra. So the close today, I thought I would read one last book and it's one that Seuss wrote specifically about politics, he said. This book, Marvyn King Mooney Will You Please Go Now, was written in the midst of the Watergate scandal. And he was very explicit in some correspondence at the time that he really was thinking about Richard Nixon when he wrote this book. So I thought a week after Obama takes office there's some strange reason this book popped into my mind. And I thought it would be a good place to end, as well as being a book about farewells and goodbyes. So, let's change glasses again. The time has come. The time has come. The time is now. Just go! Go! Go! I don't care how. You can go by foot. You can go by cow. Marvyn King Mooney Will You Please Go Now. You can go on skates. You can go on skis. You can go on a hat. But please go. Please. I don't care. You can go by bike. You can go by a zike bike if you like. If you like you can go on an old blue shoe. Just go! Go! Go! Please do, do, do. Marvyn King Mooney I Don't Care How. Marvyn King Mooney Will You Just Please Go Now. You can go on stilts. You can go by fish. You can go on a crank car if you wish. You can wish, if you wish you may go by lion's tail. Or stamp yourself and go by mail. Marvyn King Mooney Don't You Know The Time Has Come To Go! Go! Go! Get on your way, please Marvyn King. You might like going on a Zumble's A. You can go by balloon or broomstick. Or you can go by camel in a bureau drawer. You can go by bumble boat or jet. I don't care how you go. Just get. Get yourself a gazoom. You can go with a boom. Marvyn, Marvyn, Marvyn. Will you leave this room? Marvyn King Mooney I Don't Care How. Marvyn King Mooney Will You Please Go Now. I said Go! And Go! I meant the time had come. So Marvyn went. So, thanks for listening. In just a minute we'll start 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. which is an astonishing film and one that's well worth seeing. It's rarely shown. So I hope you'll stick around. It's written and designed by Dr. Seuss in the 1950s. It's sort of like what would happen if Leavitt the Beaver had an acid trip, I think. And it's definitely worth seeing. As it happens, the boy who's in the film turned out to be the original owner of Lassie before Timmy on the television series. So he is indeed an icon of the 1950s generation. So enjoy. Thank you very much.