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.

Top 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.

• 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.

• 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.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

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