Bartholomew Cubbins

This article is about the fictional character. For the pseudonymous director, see Jared Leto.

Bartholomew Cubbins is a fictional page, a pleasant boy, and the hero of two children's books by Dr. Seuss: The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins (1938) and Bartholomew and the Oobleck (1949). Cubbins also appears in "King Grimalken and the Wishbones", the first of Seuss's so-called "lost stories" that were only published in magazines.[1] Besides the three printed stories about him—and the stage adaptations of both books—Bartholomew Cubbins also appears as a character in the TV show The Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss.[citation needed] Seuss's only film, The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T., has a main character named Bartholomew Collins who is based on Cubbins, and, like his namesake, is a young boy who is wiser than the adults around him.[2]

Claim of religious significance

Robert L. Short (1932–2009), in his book The Parables of Dr. Seuss, points out that Bartholomew shares a name with one of the apostles of Jesus. Bartholomew Cubbins presses the silly King Derwin of the Kingdom of Didd into humility and repentance, encouraging the king to apologize for his harmful actions.[3]

References

  1. ^ Cohen, Charles (24 February 2004). The Seuss, the Whole Seuss and Nothing But the Seuss: A Visual Biography of Theodor Seuss Geisel. Random House Children's Books. pp. 297–298. ISBN 978-0-375-82248-3.
  2. ^ Lee, Peter W. Y. (12 January 2021). "A Futile Rage Against the Machine: The Triumph of The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T". In Castro, Ingrid E. (ed.). Childhood, Agency, and Fantasy: Walking in Other Worlds. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 44. ISBN 978-1-4985-9430-1.
  3. ^ Short, Robert L. (1 January 2008). The Parables of Dr. Seuss. Westminster John Knox Press. p. 94. ISBN 978-0-664-23047-0.

Further reading

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