I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew
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| Author | Dr. Seuss |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Children's literature |
| Publisher | Random House |
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Publication date
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1965 (renewed 1993) |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover and paperback) |
| OCLC | 1425583 |
| Preceded by | Fox in Socks |
| Followed by | The Cat in the Hat Song Book |
I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew is a 1965 children's book by Dr. Seuss. The story features classic Seuss rhymes and drawings in his distinctive pen and ink style.
The book is a first-person narrative told by a young narrator who experiences troubles in his life (mostly aggressive small animals that bite and sting) and wishes to escape them. He sets out for the city of Solla Sollew ("where they never have troubles / at least very few") and learns that he must face his problems instead of running away from them. He then goes back home to deal with his "troubles", arming himself with a big bat and resolving that "Now my troubles are going to have troubles with me!"
The journey includes several fantastic, and troublesome, encounters. In one instance, the protagonist is forced to haul a wagon for a bossy companion. ("'This is called teamwork. I furnish the brains. You furnish the muscles, the aches and the pains.'") In another scene, he is drafted into the army under the command of the fearsome (and, ultimately, cowardly) General Genghis Kahn Schmitz, who abandons him at a critical moment.
As the story opens, the young protagonist (resembling a cat or dog) lives a happy and carefree life in the Valley of Vung, but one day, all that changes when he goes out for a stroll to look at daisies and hurts himself by tripping over a rock, which sets off the troubles he will soon face. The protagonist vows to be more careful, but a green-headed Quilligan Quail bites his tail from behind ("I learned there are troubles of more than one kind; Some come from ahead and some come from behind"). Worse still, a Skritz dives to sting his neck and a Skrink bites his toe, proving that troubles can come from all directions.
As the protagonist tries to fight off his troubles, a man on a One Wheel Wubble drawn by a camel comes up and explains that like the protagonist, he too is experiencing a troubled life and has decided to escape his troubles by going to Solla Sollew, a city on the beautiful banks of the river Wah-Hoo, and known to never have troubles (at least very few). He invites the protagonist to come along with him. Eager to escape his troubles, the protagonist joins the wubble driver, but after a long night of traveling, the camel gets sick and starts to bubble. At first, the driver and protagonist pull him on the wubble, but for the rest of the day, the driver acts lazy and has the protagonist do all the hard work.
The next day they thankfully discover a camel doctor, Dr. Sam Snell, who diagnoses their camel with a bad case of gleeks and orders him to bed for twenty weeks. The driver makes it up to the protagonist by telling him he can catch the 4:42 bus to Solla Sollew at the nearest bus stop, but when the protagonist gets to the bus stop he learns from a sign tacked on a stick that the Solla Sollew bound bus is out of service (the driver, Butch Myers, apparently destroyed all his tires from accidentally running over four nails), leaving him to hike for one hundred miles. Soon, the poor protagonist is caught in a storm. A kindly stranger tells him that the storm is the infamous "Midwinter Jicker" and allows the protagonist to take shelter in his house, where a family of mice and a family of owls are also taking shelter.
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