The book:
This is the story of an elephant, Horton, who one day hears a noise coming from a speck of dust on a clover. He soon discovers that there is a very small town, Who-ville, full of buildings and people living on the speck. He speaks to the mayor of Who-ville and finds out all about them. All of the other animals think he is crazy, but Horton decides to do whatever he can to protect the inhabitants of the speck.
First, he guards them from the kangaroo’s careless splashing. Then a group of monkeys, the Wickersham Brothers, decide to stop Horton’s crazy antics, and they steal the clover and give it to an eagle named Vlad Vlad-i-koff, who flies away. Horton chases him, but the eagle drops the clover into a field full of ones that looked exactly like it. He searches and searches, and finally finds the right clover.
He talks to them and discovers that their city is damaged badly. Horton promises to stick by them while the repair their city, but soon, the kangaroo and the monkeys arrive and say they’re going to drop the clover in a pot of boiling water. They put Horton in a cage, and are about to destroy the clover. Horton begs the mayor to make as much noise as possible to prove that they exist, but the kangaroo still can’t hear them.
Finally, the mayor asks the little boy Jojo to join them in making noise. Finally, the kangaroo hears the noise, and he finally admits that there is a town called Who-ville with little Who-people living there in the speck on the clover. He promises to help Horton protect them from now on.
The movie:
While entertaining, the movie was very different from the original story in several significant ways. In the book, for example, the character Jojo was just a small boy in Who-ville . In the movie, however, he was the mayor’s son. The difficult relationship between the mayor and his son was a significant storyline in the movie, as was the mayor’s relationship with his wife, his 96 daughters, and the rest of the townsfolk.
The movie also has a great deal of silliness added in for kids. In one scene, the mayor walks by a construction worker, who says “These luxury condos don’t build themselves” and just then, Horton jumps, making the speck bounce. Suddenly, the construction site bounces into the air, and when everything falls back to the ground, the condos have built themselves. Another such silly moment is when the mayor accidentally staples his face, and the mayor’s receptionist is on the computer looking at Who-space.com.
I can forgive corny these additions. After all, the book is only 60 pages or so, while the movie is almost and hour and a half. They would obviously need to add scenes that weren’t originally in the book. However, there is one omission that I believe really keeps this movie from being in the same league as the book.
The trademarked Dr. Seuss rhythm of the story is mostly lost in the movie.The narrator, who quotes almost directly from the book, does maintain his rhyming, but this is used mostly in the beginning and the end of the story, and largely absent for the bulk of the movie that lies in between.
Though not delivered in the same way, the overriding theme is apparent in both the book and the movie. A person is a person, no matter how small they are.
Seuss, D. (1954). Horton hears a who!. New York, NY: Random House.
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