SuitabookThe 500 hats of Bartholomew Cubbins
Dr. Seuss
- Reading
- Try reading together, pausing when the danger escalates to check how the child is taking it. The unrhymed prose and illustrations offer natural moments to linger, count hats or ask what might happen next.
- Themes
- Power and unfair treatment: Bartholomew follows the rule about removing his hat, but the king persists in punishing him as hats reappear. The book takes a critical view of this.
- Danger in a comic fantasy: The hats provoke increasingly dangerous responses, including attempted execution and a proposed fall from a tower, amid absurd magical events. The book presents competing or mixed signals about this.
- Worth knowing
- The ordeal includes imprisonment, arrows aimed at the hats, a death sentence and a proposed fall from a tower. The king also spanks his nephew; consider whether these perilous comic scenes might unsettle your child.