Dr. Seuss Enterprises (DSE) issued a statement:
We are committed to action. To that end, Dr. Seuss Enterprises, working with a panel of experts, including educators, reviewed our catalog of titles and made the decision last year to cease publication and licensing of the following titles: And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, If I Ran the Zoo, McElligot’s Pool, On Beyond Zebra!, Scrambled Eggs Super!, and The Cat’s Quizzer. These books portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong.
That confused some people into thinking Dr. Seuss had been cancelled. No.
© Dr. Seuss Enterprises
But there was confusion. Since DSE didn’t list the offending portions of the books, just what were they? It has pretty much been agreed as to what was wrong in those books, though no one outside of Dr. Seuss Enterprises knows for sure. Some sites claim to know, but I am linking to the Bounding Into Comics article because they had the integrity to say their list was “speculation as to why a given title was selected.”
If some of those images seem innocuous let me follow Mike Peterson’s lead
and link to this column by Michael Harriot for clarification.
I think I may know why white people are so upset about this Dr. Seuss/cancel culture thing. I was reminded of this story today.
It goes back to the second-most devastating day of my life:
The day I found out the Hardy Boys were white.
Some of these are offensive, but some are REALLY mild, and I suspect that they were largely discontinued because the books weren’t selling.
I devoured Dr. Seuss when I was a kid, but If I Ran the Zoo, McElligot’s Pool, and Scrambled Eggs Super were the ones that didn’t interest me at all. I loved On Beyond Zebra, though. Inventing your own alphabet appealed to me as a kid. I find it hard to believe that they pulled because it has a “Nazzim from Bazzim” (which isn’t even a real thing) who looks like he might be Middle Eastern.