Dr. Seuss Books are Racist Now.

One of the books in my childhood library was "And to Think I Saw It on Mulberry Street".

It was a wonderful story about a little boy in the city venturing outside and all the sights he saw (or imagined seeing) on the diverse and active Mulberry Street.

I liked it especially, because every page you turned, there was more and more detail -- and excitement -- in the illustrations.

 Eventually, a marching band turned up, and if marching bands don't introduce a general chaos to the streets, what will?

(Also, unlike some of Seuss's later books, this was about a person -- a boy -- not a Sneech, a Who, or another furry non-human creature.)

As a first-generation American lapping up everything I could learn about this land, Mulberry Street was a fun find.

When I leave home to walk to school,
Dad always says to me,
"Marco, keep your eyelids up,
and see what you can see."

But when I tell him where I've been
and what I think I've seen,
he looks at me and sternly says,
"Your eyesight's much too keen..."

"Stop telling such outlandish tales.
Stop turning minnows into whales."

Now what can I say,
when I get home today?

Imagine my surprise to learn that the book is now considered racist, for some of the minor illustrations hidden on the pages...

Sad!

Mostly, I feel for the kids of today, who are learning to read and think with tie-in books to popular movies, or something a celebrity-woman-turned-children's-author has written. You can still ferret out good books, of course, but if we are going to diss Dr. Seuss, children are the losers.

Here were the early reviews:

Clifton Fadiman wrote a one-sentence review in The New Yorker, which Geisel (penname Dr. Seuss) could still quote near the end of his life:

"They say it's for children, but better get a copy for yourself and marvel at the good Dr. Seuss' impossible pictures and the moral tale of the little boy who exaggerated not wisely but too well."

The New York Times wrote, "Highly original and entertaining, Dr Seuss' picture book partakes of the better qualities of those peculiarly America institutions, the funny papers and the tall tale. It is a masterly interpretation of the mind of a child in the act of creating one of those stories with which children often amuse themselves and bolster up their self-respect."
...
English children's author Beatrix Potter wrote, "What an amusing picture book ... I think it the cleverest book I have met with for many years. The swing and merriment of the pictures and the natural truthful simplicity of the untruthfulness ... Too many story books for children are condescending, self-conscious inventions—and then some trivial oversight, some small incorrect detail gives the whole show away. Dr. Seuss does it thoroughly!"
...
A. O. Scott, in a 2000 article in The New York Times called the book "a hymn to the generative power of fantasy, a celebration of the sheer inventive pleasure of spinning an ordinary event into 'a story that no one can beat'."

Maybe that is why the reverse-racists see the need now to bring the book down? (Instead of competing by writing something better, it's easier scream racism, try to rewrite history, and erase our shared pasts....)

And then there's this:

Jonathan Cott noted that Mulberry Street is similar to "Der Erlkönig", a German poem by Goethe, "for both of them are about a father and a son and about the exigencies and power of the imagination."

When Cott told Geisel about this, Geisel responded by quoting the first two lines of the poem, in German. He also noted that he was raised in a German-speaking home, minored in German in college, and had memorized the poem while in high school.

I'll end here. It's bad enough to hear Dr. Seuss called a racist; I don't want him tarred as a Nazi too.
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TRIVIA: John Fogerty, frontman for the Creedence Clearwater Revival, has stated that the band's song "Lookin' Out My Back Door" was partly inspired by the book.

Bother me tomorrow, today, I'll buy no sorrows.
Doo doo doo lookin' out my back door.
Forward troubles Illinois, lock the front door oh boy!
Look at all the happy creatures dancing on the lawn.
Bother me tomorrow, today, I'll buy no sorrows.
Doo doo doo lookin' out my back door.

ADDED: I hope the First Lady, herself a newcomer to our land, continues donating books as she sees fit. We support your choice of materials, your generosity, and your belief that if you want to change the world, books are as good a place as anywhere to begin...

To celebrate “National Read a Book Day,” the first lady had sent out a collection of 10 Dr. Seuss books to one school in each state across the nation. The titles included: "The Cat in the Hat"; "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish"; "Wacky Wednesday"; "Green Eggs and Ham"; and "Oh, the Places You’ll Go!"

She followed in the footsteps of her predecessor, Michelle Obama, who often read Dr. Seuss books to children. Former first ladies Hillary Clinton and Barbara Bush also read to children at Dr. Seuss-themed educational events.

“I wanted to send you a special gift. Dr. Seuss’s Oh, the Places You’ll Go! is a book my son and I have read over and over again, and one that we want to share with all of you,” the first lady wrote in her letter to students. “Please also remember that you are the future of America and that you can accomplish anything you set your mind to.”

But despite the gesture, Liz Phipps Soeiro, a librarian at a public school in Cambridge, wrote a letter to the first lady, which was then published on The Horn Book blog, notifying Mrs. Trump that her school would “not be keeping the titles” for their collection, explaining that her school didn’t have a “NEED” for the books, due to her school and library’s “award-winning” status.

“I work in a district that has plenty of resources, which contributes directly to ‘excellence,’” Soeiro wrote. “My students have access to a school library with over nine thousand volumes and a librarian with a graduate degree in library science.”

Soeiro went on to slam the White House and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos for not gifting the books to “underfunded and underprivileged communities,” which she suggested “continue to be marginalized” by DeVos’ policies.

But Soeiro seemed to be the most offended by the books themselves.

“Another fact that many people are unaware of is that Dr. Seuss’s illustrations are steeped in racist propaganda, caricatures, and harmful stereotypes,” Soeiro wrote, giving examples of "If I Ran a Zoo" and "And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street" as clear “racist mockery” in Seuss’ art.