Search
Close this search box.

NOW THIS: Dr Seuss Books Are “Racist”; Company To Stop Publishing 6 Titles


It’s been a busy week for liberals.

First Mr. Potato Head went gender-free, and today, six Dr Seuss books have been deemed “racist” and will no longer be published.

Six Dr. Seuss books – including “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street” and “If I Ran the Zoo” – will stop being published because of racist and insensitive imagery, the business that preserves and protects the author’s legacy said Tuesday.

“These books portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong,” Dr. Seuss Enterprises told The Associated Press in a statement that coincided with the late author and illustrator’s birthday.

“Ceasing sales of these books is only part of our commitment and our broader plan to ensure Dr. Seuss Enterprises’ catalog represents and supports all communities and families,” it said.

The other books affected are “McElligot’s Pool,” “On Beyond Zebra!,” “Scrambled Eggs Super!,” and “The Cat’s Quizzer.”

The decision to cease publication and sales of the books was made last year after months of discussion, the company told AP.

“Dr. Seuss Enterprises listened and took feedback from our audiences including teachers, academics and specialists in the field as part of our review process. We then worked with a panel of experts, including educators, to review our catalog of titles,” it said.

Books by Dr. Seuss — who was born Theodor Seuss Geisel in Springfield, Massachusetts, on March 2, 1904 —- have been translated into dozens of languages as well as in braille and are sold in more than 100 countries. He died in 1991.

He remains popular, earning an estimated $33 million before taxes in 2020, up from just $9.5 million five years ago, the company said. Forbes listed him No. 2 on its highest-paid dead celebrities of 2020, behind only the late pop star Michael Jackson.

As adored as Dr. Seuss is by millions around the world for the positive values in many of his works, including environmentalism and tolerance, there has been increasing criticism in recent years over the way Blacks, Asians and others are drawn in some of his most beloved children’s books, as well as in his earlier advertising and propaganda illustrations.

The National Education Association, which founded Read Across America Day in 1998 and deliberately aligned it with Geisel’s birthday, has for several years deemphasized Seuss and encouraged a more diverse reading list for children.

School districts across the country have also moved away from Dr. Seuss, prompting Loudoun County, Virginia, schools just outside Washington, D.C., to douse rumors last month that they were banning the books entirely.

“Research in recent years has revealed strong racial undertones in many books written/illustrated by Dr. Seuss,” the school district said in a statement.

In 2017, a school librarian in Cambridge, Massachusetts, criticized a gift of 10 Seuss books from first lady Melania Trump, saying many of his works were “steeped in racist propaganda, caricatures, and harmful stereotypes.”

In 2018, a Dr. Seuss museum in his hometown of Springfield removed a mural that included an Asian stereotype.

“The Cat in the Hat,” one of Seuss’ most popular books, has received criticism, too, but will continue to be published for now.

Dr. Seuss Enterprises, however, said it is “committed to listening and learning and will continue to review our entire portfolio.”

Numerous other popular children’s series have been criticized in recent years for alleged racism.

In the 2007 book, “Should We Burn Babar?,” the author and educator Herbert R. Kohl contended that the “Babar the Elephant” books were celebrations of colonialism because of how the title character leaves the jungle and later returns to “civilize” his fellow animals.

One of the books, “Babar’s Travels,” was removed from the shelves of a British library in 2012 because of its alleged stereotypes of Africans. Critics also have faulted the “Curious George” books for their premise of a white man bringing home a monkey from Africa.

And Laura Ingalls Wilder’s portrayals of Native Americans in her “Little House On the Prairie” novels have been faulted so often that the American Library Association removed her name in 2018 from a lifetime achievement award it gives out each year.

(AP)



11 Responses

  1. Well, now it’s our turn. We’ve been complaining long enough about Shakespeare’s anti semitism. His character Shylock has been discussed for as long as I remember. Enough discussion! Now we have to take action and ban Shakespeare, or at least his anti semitic works!

  2. Is sleepy joe going to shut down “Metropolitan Museum of Art” & every other Art Museum in America? since all these old European paintings are of white people.

  3. It’s amazing how some idiot with a platform decides something is racist and all liberals fall in step. When will this insanity end? Next on the chopping block Bible stories.

  4. I’m so happy to see how our hard earn tax money is being spent on all this hard and difficult problems that we’ve had for so many year, finally being addressed and fix…..🙄Don’t forgot to close the bronx zoo awhile your at it, they use to own a african boy and made him live in a cage with monkeys (you can google) its a dark side of the Zoo that the zoo doesnt want the public to know about. The issue is, is that the really problems and issue people don’t really want to work hard and fix them but to shove them under the carpet or blame somebody else for it to take care of the problem

  5. Tax money? Biden? Are you people insane? This is the free market. Capitalism. A private company decided itself to move into the 21st century and stop selling a few books offensive to its readers. Books that were written 50-80 years ago. Dr. Seuss, after all, was vehemently against “America First” Nazism back in the 1940s. This is his family continuing his legacy. It says something that people (Jews?) Are so offended when racist literature is removed from the market.

    Oh, and plastic potatoes don’t have a gender!

    How out of touch can you possibly be to think that this is an important issue?

Leave a Reply


Popular Posts