Dr. Seuss

 

Theodore Seuss Geisel, the children’s author known as Dr. Seuss, was born on March 2, 1904, in Springfield, MA. On the 117^th anniversary of his birth yesterday, Dr. Seuss Enterprises, the business that preserves and protects the author’s legacy, announced that six of his books will no longer be published because they "portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong." The titles are:

• And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street
• If I Ran the Zoo
• McElligot's Pool
• On Beyond Zebra!
• Scrambled Eggs Super!
• The Cat's Quizzer

Charis Granger-Mbugua, a National Board Certified teacher and Spelman College graduate, published an opinion piece on Dr. Seuss in the Atlantic Journal Constitution:

 Why schools should rethink Dr. Seuss

Ms. Granger-Mbugua was interviewed by Erin Burnett on CNN:

Dr. Seuss Six Books Erin Burnett

I set out to find some of the possibly troubling images in the Dr. Seuss books. Here are some that I found.

And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street

If I Ran the Zoo

McElligot's Pool

When I first heard about this, I found myself scratching my head. We had our weekly group “Zoom” with our daughters last evening and looked through a few of the titles. I could not help but wonder if I am simply not sufficiently sensitive to the issues being raised. To attempt to address this, as I prepared this post I tried to come up with similar examples of Jewish stereotypes. In my mind, these fall into two categories. Some, such as the overly protective Jewish mother, are usually at least somewhat amusing. But there are plenty of others that can be downright offensive, such as those that show Jews as nasty and obsessed with wealth.

So, the question is, do the images in the books cited by Dr. Seuss Enterprises foster negative racial or ethnic stereotypes that children maintain into adulthood? Alternatively, are we being overly sensitive by removing much beloved books and preventing children from benefiting from literature that may, on balance, have positive messages and provide hours of enjoyment?

So where does this leave us on reading Dr. Seuss to our grandchildren? In answer to this question, it may be helpful to consider thoughts shared by author Art Spiegelman (Maus) about Dr. Seuss taken from an article written by Fiona Macdonald in 2019 on the 115th anniversary of Dr Seuss’ birth.

 

Describing Dr Seuss’s wartime output as “very impressive evidence of cartooning as an art of persuasion”, Spiegelman explains how they “rail against isolationism, racism, and anti-semitism with a conviction and fervor lacking in most other American editorial pages of the period… virtually the only editorial cartoons outside the communist and black press that decried the military’s Jim Crow policies and Charles Lindbergh’s anti-semitism”. Dr Seuss, he argues, “made these drawings with the fire of honest indignation and anger that fuels all real political art”.

Julia and Noah do not seem to share my love of The Lorax, but I cannot see giving up The Cat in the Hat.

Love,                                                          

Rebecca