Say the name Dr. Seuss and people think of cats with big red and white striped top hats, north going zaxes and south going zaxes staring at each other as a city grows around them, sam and oddly colored eggs and ham, or a zillion other delightfully quirky characters. Most people do not immediately think of Bartholomew Cubbins.

Generally we as a culture identify Seuss with offbeat rhymes with underlying lessons, cute off the wall characters, and delightful nonsense words. It's what we expect, what we want. The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins doesn't fit that mold. As such, for many, it's considered a throwaway book, subpar Seuss, a book to avoid. Several months ago eplovejoy wrote a negative review of this book highlighting some of the reasons he dislikes it, and many folks chimed in agreeing in the comments section.

I am here to say that I love The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins. With the possible exception of the Horton books, it's my favorite Seuss story. I came by it naturally - my mother loves it too. In fact, for several years I had to listen to her moan about not be able to find our copy several times a year. So I bought my then fifty-something mother a new copy of the book for Hanukkah a few years ago. She told me it was best present I ever gave her.

I don't think anyone would disagree that Barthomew is different from other Seuss books. I certainly don't. It doesn't have the same sense of the ridiculous that many Seuss stories have. There are no overt positive lessons, other than perhaps there's always hope. The book doesn't rhyme. It isn't filled with brightly colored pictures.

What it does have is a fairy tale. Moreso than other Seuss books it is a cohesive story, a story set in that wonderful world of castles that most fairy tales seem to live in. It's almost realistic, with that slightly off-kilter reality that really makes a fairy tale breathe.

It also has wonderful mostly black and white drawings, drawings much more detailed than most Seuss illustrations. The only color in any of the drawings are the hats, 500 bright red hats. This technique works wonderfully well, really drawing your attention to drawings.

It also has some more normal and more fleshed out (albeit somewhat predictable) characters than the typical Seuss tale. Bartholomew is a normal boy who has one slight problem. The king seems to fit the normal king mode for these types of stories. The other more minor characters fit their roles as expected. This is not a story built on oddball characters. No, it's plot-driven.

Just because the characters are more ordinary and the text not in rhyme doesn't mean Seuss had no fun with this book. He still had quite a lot of fun with language, playing around with names - the Yeoman of the Bowman comes to mind here - and he still gave the characters quirks that could only come from a twisted mind.

Which brings us to.....The Prose

This may not be a typical Seuss rhymefest, but it still has clever careful word choice and interesting phrasing that makes Seuss special. This is best illustrated with a pair of descriptive lines near the beginning of the book:

From his balcony, he looked down over the houses of all his subjects - first over the spires of the noblemen's castles, across the broad roofs of the rich men's mansions, then over the little houses of the townfolk, to the huts of the farmers far off in the fields.

It was a mighty view and it made King Derwin feel mighty important.

Followed closely by:

From the small door Bartholomew looked across the huts of the farmers to the houses of the townfolk, then to the rich men's mansions and the noblemen's castles, up to the great towering palace of the King. It was exactly the same view that King Derwin saw, but Bartholomew saw it backward.

It was a mighty view, but it made Bartholomew Cubbins feel mighty small.

The parallelism, the slight twisting of the words to portray the change from top to bottom, from rich to poor, from confident to confidentless all works perfectly. There is no doubt that Seuss was a master wordsmith.

Which brings us to...The Plot

If you haven't read the book and don't want to know exactly what happens, don't read the rest of this review.

Bartholomew Cubbins lives in the cranberry bogs beneath King Derwin's castle. Far far beneath, past the farms and the town and the rich people's mansions, and the noblemen's castles. He was about as far removed from the king as one could get in every way - distance, status, wealth. All he had was a basket of cranberries to sell and a red hat with a pointed feather stuck in it.

As he walks through town, the king's carraige passed and all were ordered to remove their hats. Bartholomew obeyed the command, but something odd happened. Although only in possession of one hat, when he removed it another magically appeared on his head. He kept removing the hats and more kept appearing.

The king was furious, thinking he was the butt of some joke, and had Bartholomew arrested. Bartholomew kept removing hats and more hats kept appearing. Wisemen tried removing them. Hatmakers tried removing them. Archers tried removing them. Magicians tried removing them. Nothing worked.

The king decided it was time for drastic measures. If the hats would not come off of the head of Bartholomew Cubbins then the head would have to come off. But alas, everyone knows it's against the rules to chop off someone's head while he's wearing a hat, so Bartholomew headed up to the top tower of the castle, death by push looming, hats trailing behind, all identical to the very first hat he wore. Then something odd happened. As we neared 500 hats, the hats started changing, growing more stylish, having more decoration.

The 500th hat appeared, replete with glorious feathers and many red jewels, just as Bartholomew reached the top of the castle. It was the most breathtaking hat the king had ever seen and he immediately knew he had to own it. So he bought the hat for 500 gold coins and Bartholomew went home rich and hatless.

Which brings us to...The End

Recommended: Yes