Caps for Sale

Summary

Caps for Sale, subtitled A Tale of a Peddler, Some Monkeys and Their Monkey Business, is a picture book about a cap seller who carries his whole stock on his head. He wears his own checked cap first, then a bunch of gray caps, then brown ones, then blue ones, and on the very top a bunch of red caps, and he walks very straight so they will not fall. One morning he walks up and down the streets calling out his caps at fifty cents apiece, but nobody buys even one. Hungry and without money for lunch, he walks slowly out into the country, sits down against a big tree, feels his caps to be sure they are all there, and falls asleep. When he wakes and reaches up, only his own checked cap is left. He looks to the right, to the left, behind him, and behind the tree, and finally up into the branches, where a monkey sits on every limb wearing a gray, brown, blue, or red cap. He shakes a finger and orders them to give back his caps, and the monkeys shake their fingers back and chatter. He shakes both hands, and they shake theirs; he stamps his feet, and they stamp theirs. At last, too angry to go on, he pulls off his own cap, throws it on the ground, and starts to walk away. Every monkey copies him, and caps rain down from the tree. The peddler picks them up, stacks them on his head in their proper order, and walks slowly back to town to sell them. Slobodkina first made the pictures as cut-paper collage, redrew them for a 1947 edition, and kept the flat shapes and bright colors, while the repeated lines invite children to join the telling and act out the monkeys. The story follows an old folk tale of monkeys who imitate a cap seller. W. R. Scott published the book in 1940; it received the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award in 1958 and has sold millions of copies.

Plot or Argument

• A tower of caps

  The peddler balances his stock on his head in a fixed order, his checked cap at the bottom and gray, brown, blue, and red caps above, and walks carefully through the town calling his wares. No one wants a cap that morning.

• A nap under the tree

  Hungry and penniless, he walks slowly into the country, sits against a large tree, checks that every cap is in place, and falls asleep.

• Where are the caps?

  He wakes to find only his own checked cap. He searches right, left, behind him, and behind the tree, then looks up and sees monkeys in every branch wearing his caps.

• Monkey see, monkey do

  He scolds with a shaking finger, then shakes both hands, then stamps his feet, and each time the monkeys copy him exactly and chatter back. His anger grows with every attempt.

• The caps come down

  Furious, he throws his own cap to the ground and walks off. The monkeys throw down their caps too. He gathers them, restacks them in order, and walks back to town to sell them.

Characters

• The peddler, protagonist

  Mustached cap seller who carries all his caps on his head and grows more and more angry with the thieving monkeys; later sequels name him Pezzo.

• The monkeys, mischief-makers

  A treeful of monkeys who take the caps while the peddler sleeps and copy every gesture he makes.

Lessons

• Copying without understanding

  The monkeys copy every move the peddler makes, but they have no idea what the moves mean. That is why scolding them is useless and why a single thrown cap brings all the others down. Children can see that imitation is powerful, for good or for mischief.

  • Why did the monkeys shake their fingers when the peddler shook his?
  • What made the monkeys finally throw the caps down?
  • Who do you copy without thinking? Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

• Anger does not get our way

  Each time the peddler grows angrier, from shaking a finger to stamping his feet, the monkeys only grow sillier. He gets his caps back by accident, at the moment he gives up. The book lets young children laugh at a grown-up's temper and notice that shouting did not work.

  • How did the peddler feel as the monkeys copied him?
  • Did his shouting and stamping help him get his caps?
  • What could you do instead of stamping your feet when you are angry?

• Taking care of our work

  The peddler carries his caps carefully, walks slowly so as not to upset them, and checks they are all there before he sleeps. When he gets them back he puts every color in its proper place and goes back to work. Patient order is part of earning a living.

  • In what order did the peddler stack his caps?
  • Why did he walk so slowly?
  • What do you have to take care of every day?

Context

Itinerant peddlers who carried their wares and called them in the streets were still a familiar sight in American towns and cities in the 1930s. The cap seller and the imitating monkeys is an old folk tale told in many forms, often set in India or Africa; the earliest known printed version is a sailor's anecdote in a Wilmington, North Carolina, newspaper of 1789. Slobodkina gives the tale no particular country, so her town and countryside feel like anywhere.

Composition

Slobodkina, a modernist painter, entered children's books in 1938 through Margaret Wise Brown and the small New York publisher William R. Scott, which encouraged artist-made picture books. Her first book with Brown, The Little Fireman (1938), was the first American picture book illustrated in cut-paper collage, and she made the original pictures for Caps for Sale the same way, in a deliberately simple style. She wanted the peddler to be a particular person whom a child acting out the story could play like a part. Scott published the book in the fall of 1940, and Kirkus called it good-natured nonsense in which text and pictures tell the story together. Slobodkina re-illustrated it for a 1947 edition with better color printing, and later editions passed to Harper.

Reception

The New York Times Book Review praised pictures whose design was as repetitious and balanced as the text, and sales grew after the 1947 edition. The book became a staple of story hours and kindergartens because children can say the repeated lines and act out the monkeys. It received the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award in 1958, has been translated into several languages and adapted for the stage, and led to sequels including Pezzo the Peddler and the Circus Elephant (1967), More Caps for Sale (2015), and Caps for Sale and the Mindful Monkeys (2017).

Comparisons

• make-way-for-ducklings

  Both picture books from the early 1940s use a simple journey, a repeated pattern, and animals in a human world; McCloskey's ducklings obey and cross safely, while Slobodkina's monkeys disobey and cause comic trouble.

• mike-mulligan-and-his-steam-shovel

  Another hardworking man with one precious possession faces a problem that seems hopeless, and the solution comes from an unexpected direction in a story built on repetition.

• just-so-stories

  Kipling also retells animal folk tales with refrains meant to be read aloud, and both books come from the long tradition of oral storytelling about clever and foolish creatures.

• the-tale-of-peter-rabbit

  Both tiny books use a single misadventure, clear pictures, and a return to order, and both turn on a loss of clothing, Peter's jacket and shoes and the peddler's caps.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The order of the caps on the peddler's head. Say the colors from the bottom to the top.
• Every place the peddler looks for his caps before he looks up into the tree.
• Each thing the peddler does to the monkeys, and what the monkeys do back.
• How the peddler's face changes as he gets angrier.

Key terms and names

Peddler

A person who walks from place to place selling things. This peddler sells caps.

Cap

A small soft hat with no wide brim. The peddler wears all of his caps at once.

Checked

Covered in a pattern of little squares. The peddler's own cap is checked.

Imitate

To copy what someone else does. The monkeys imitate the peddler.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension Where did the peddler carry his caps?
2. Comprehension What did the peddler find when he woke up from his nap?
3. Comprehension How did the peddler get his caps back at the end?
4. Interpretation Why did the monkeys copy everything the peddler did?
5. Interpretation Did the peddler know that throwing his cap would work? How can you tell?
6. Interpretation Why do you think the peddler kept his own checked cap at the very bottom?
7. Big Question Is it good to copy other people? When is it good, and when is it not?

Faith Connections

• James 1:19-20 (Scripture)

  Be slow to anger, for anger does not bring about what God wants. The peddler's scolding and stamping never get the caps back; only when he stops trying do the caps come down.

• 1 Corinthians 11:1 (Scripture)

  Paul tells the church to copy him as he copies Christ. The monkeys show how much we copy others, so it matters whom we choose to follow.

• Matthew 6:11 (Scripture)

  Give us this day our daily bread. The peddler has no money for lunch until he sells his caps, a picture of how much a working family depends on each day's sales.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: The monkeys copy whatever the peddler does. So whatever the peddler does with his own cap, the monkeys will do with theirs. When he finally throws his cap down, they throw theirs down too, and he gets them all back.

Rhetorical device: repetition with escalation. The same pattern happens again and again, the peddler acts and the monkeys copy, but each time his action is bigger, from a shaking finger to both hands to stamping feet, so children can guess what comes next and feel the anger build.

Debate: Resolved: The peddler was clever, not just lucky, when he got his caps back.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Tell the story of the peddler and the monkeys in your own words. Use the words first, next, then, and last.

Comparison with Make Way for Ducklings: The ducklings copied their mother and walked in a line, and the monkeys copied the peddler. Tell how copying helped in one story and caused trouble in the other.

Medical Lens

No medical content. The book concerns a peddler, a nap under a tree, and a band of imitating monkeys.

Creative Prompts

• Classroom

  Act out the story with one child as the peddler and the rest as monkeys, copying every gesture until the peddler throws down his cap.

• Classroom

  Cut out paper caps in checked, gray, brown, blue, and red, and have each child stack them in the peddler's order, then count how much money he would make selling them at fifty cents each.

• Fiction

  Tell what the monkeys said to each other after the caps fell, and whether they ever tried to take caps again.

• Adaptation

  Draw a new page in Slobodkina's style, with flat shapes and bright colors, showing the peddler selling his first cap after getting them back.

Further Reading

• Pezzo the Peddler and the Circus Elephant, Esphyr Slobodkina

  The author's own sequel, later reissued as Circus Caps for Sale.

• More Caps for Sale, Esphyr Slobodkina and Ann Marie Mulhearn Sayer

• The Little Fireman, Margaret Wise Brown

  A Margaret Wise Brown picture book illustrated by Slobodkina.

• American Picturebooks from Noah's Ark to the Beast Within, Barbara Bader

  History of the American picture book that discusses Slobodkina's work.