While the author does use the term "chick" throughout the book, mixing it with the human-like terms further allow the child reader to grasp the non-fiction elements of the book while still remaining interested and emotionally involved in the story. Evoking sadness in the reader, a photograph shows the mother walking away from her baby. Through the use of these words and illustrations, the fact that the penguins are animals living in a natural home is emphasized, while children are still engaged through the mild human-like qualities that are ascribed to the animals (BBC 3-4).
Thus, a comparison of the personification used in The Cat and the Hat and in Baby Penguins yields great differences between the two. While the personification in The Cat in the Hat is so extreme as to make the animals seem more human than the humans, the personification in Baby Penguins can be called light personification. Its presence is certainly there, suggesting that the book cannot be wholly called non-fiction. Still, it plays a relatively minor role, only ascribing certain traits to the animals, while emphasizing their differences from humans and place in the natural world. The personification used in Baby Penguins serves only to act as a bridge between the child's schema and the book's story line.
These differences in personification styles suggest a difference in children's literature from the 1950s and children's literature today. Both The Cat in the Hat and Baby Penguins are trying to teach a child a moral or lesson. In The Cat in the Hat that lesson is academic. This knowledge can be drawn not only from the fact that Seuss wrote the book as a vocabulary lesson, but also because of the personification. Making the animals like humans, Seuss creates a book that is interesting and funny to children. The cat performs all kinds of crazy antics, while speaking in rhyme and acting, most likely, the way that they wish they could act -- like children! The fish, a parental figure, gets upset with the cat and wags his fin at the cat. All in all it is such a hilarious situation that the children forget they are learning to read, spell, and learn knew words. Because it would be impossible to understand the book without looking at the illustrations, and vice versa, children learn to read quickly, gobbling down the information before the illustrations can inform them even further. Thus, both the situation that surrounded Sass's writing of the book...
Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.
Get Started Now