Six Dr. Seuss books are pulled for racist imagery
A look at a few books written by the well-known children’s author, Dr Seuss.
March 31, 2021
Dr. Seuss Enterprises announced in a statement on his birthday in early March that six books of his would no longer be published or sold due to racist content that was found.
The six books included 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!” and “The Cat’s Quizzer.”
“As a child, I never was aware of the racist images that were shown in Dr. Seuss’s books,” said Rylie Palfalvi (‘22).
His books have been pulled because they portray people in baneful ways. For example, one of his books “And to Think I Saw It on Mulberry Street” showed racist mockery in the content of the novel.
“I believe that the books should be pulled if they needed to be for racist imagery,” said Palfalvi (‘22).
Members of the Dr. Seuss Enterprise as well as fans and researches all agree that pulling the novels was the right thing to do.
“There are parts of his legacy one should honor, and parts of his legacy that one should not,” said the author of “Dr. Seuss: American Icon”, Philip Nel.
Similar to the words of Nel, some agree that Seuss made an important impact with his books that should not be forgotten.
“If he was racist, we definitely shouldn’t honor that, but he made a lot of children’s childhoods with books, so it depends on what we honor,” said Palfalvi (‘22).
