Celebrating the 75th anniversary The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins by Dr. Seuss, Oceanhouse Media has a great app out right now and we are enjoying it. It's a long read, but a good one, so it might be best to break it up into a few seperate reads for little ones.
A good guy Bartholomew goes to the market to sell his cranberries when the King and his procession prance by and accuse Bartholomew of not taking off his red hat as the King passes, although he has taken off his hat. But another red hat has appeared on his head and after he gets (basically abducted I mean) "grabbed by his shirt" by the Captain of the Kings Guards on his horse and taken to the castle to be examined and punished most likely.
"He took off hat after hat after hat after hat until he was standing in the middle of a great pile of hats."
All these "hat professionals" and "wise men" to try to figure out Bartholomews hat problem but none of them can.
"Does this mean there is no one in my whole kingdom who can take off this boy's hat?" bellowed the King in a terrifying voice.
Then a "very proud little boy" with "a big lace collar," the nephew of the King is curious what all the commotion is and tries to fix Bartholomew's hat issue by shooting bows and arrows at his hat and one by one the hats soar off a balcony of the castle. Then they try a bigger bow and arrow but it only makes the hats fly further and further away it doesn't mean less hats. Then they call magicians, to see if the hats appearing again and again is black magic but the chant will take ten years to work!
A terrible proposal comes from Grand Duke Wilfred who suggests chopping off his head! And the King, although knowing its a "dreadful thought" decides there is no other solution and sends Bartholomew to the dungeon.
Desperate for his hat to come off, Bartholomew starts whipping his hats off faster and faster and but lucky for Bartholomew there is a rule that he can't be killed with a hat on! YAY!
Yes this book is okay for babies, hold on...there is a happy ending.
So the King decides to push Bartholomew off the "highest turret" and Bartholomew starts frantically pulling off his hats, his last chance...but once he passed hat 450 the hats began to change and appear more fancy and unique.
At just the right moment, right as they reached the highest turret Bartholomew's hat turns into something extravagant and festive and has many many feathers streaming off of it.
The King is distracted by this flashy hat and now wants to buy it from Bartholomew, the 500th hat! For 500 gold coins!
I was sad all it took was the hat to become unordinary, and if I had been Bartholomew maybe from the start I would have decorated the hats with beads and feather with my glue gun like when making my Belmont Stakes hat.
Something terrible can become something grand, maybe it's hope, maybe it's fate, maybe things "just happen for a reason," it's about perspective but also I think Bartholomew is lucky that his hats became extravagant at just the right moment.
Warning, it is a long book, so be prepared to bring your tiredless animated and upbeat voice to the story, you can also skip some words if your baby is getting restless but keep your fun voice and make the word of the book 'HAT'. So maybe tickle your baby or say the word "Hat" in a silly way. ((My husband does the character voices, I'm still warming up to that, but I do some. ;) )) Or you could even get a hat, a red one, and keep putting the hat on your head over and over as if it's a new one each time and I bet the action of it would make your baby giggle, especially with a silly expression and eyebrows that are saying "what is going on!"
I think The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins by Dr. Seuss can remind us not to jump to conclusions, since Bartholomew wasn't trying to offend the King but got accused of it anyways. It wasn't in Batholomew's control to stop the hats but still he got treated awfully...until the 500th hat. Although he never gave up trying to prove himself and the truth. Which is always a nice lesson to share.
Read on!
Isobella & Phoenix
P.s. We ordered this KaysCase KidBox Cover Case so Phoenix can throw the iPad around and chew on it. KaysCase KidBox Cover (Blue) going to try it out and I think it's cool how it sits up.
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