Who is Dr. Seuss?
Is he the man many of us idolized?
I received an Email over the weekend from my son’s kindergarten teacher, enclosed was the school’s detailed description of how they planned to celebrate Dr. Seuss the first week of March. I read the contents and made a mental note of my son’s expectations for the following week. In celebration of the author his books would be read, pajamas and crazy socks were encouraged to be worn by students and staff all week long.
I saw my son off to school today, meeting his bus at the corner of our street and waving my goodbye to him as the bus proceeded to it’s next stop. It was then that I had an alert on my phone informing me of a notification on my Instagram account. In the process of scrolling the time-line laid out for me, I came across an article notifying me of several books that would no longer be published. The books were said to portray hurtful and offensive imagery. The author of said books was none other than Dr. Seuss!
This new information brought a curiosity to me I felt compelled to itch. Who did I grow up reading as a kid? Should I be worried about the information my son retains today at school? Why was the selected books being canceled now, and not twenty years ago?
Today is March 2, the birthday of Dr. Seuss, he was born in 1904 at a hospital in Springfield, Massachusetts. He became one of the best known American authors of all time, worthy of being celebrated in school’s throughout the country. He wrote and illustrated many books alot of us read as a child or maybe you have even seen movie adaptations based on his writings. This information however didn’t satisfy that itch I just couldn’t get to fade away. Who was Dr Seuss?
His real name was Theodor Seuss Geisel, he was not a real doctor at all, electing to use the title of “Dr.” to appease his father that expected him to study medicine. Although he spent much of his adult life writing children books, he was not a father. He used the pen name Theo Lesieg if he authored a book but did not illustrate it, and used the name Rosetta Stone for the one book he wrote in collaboration with Michael K. Frith. He attended college at Dartmouth and Oxford. He sold over 600 million copies of his books in twenty different languages before his death in September of 1991.
His days as a student at Dartmouth were filled with his publishing of anti-Semitic and racist works. He routinely portrayed stereotypes throughout his career. Today we can point out studies that have concluded his books to obtain an outstanding number of offensive imagery and vocabulary. This year schools are making headlines for their refusal to honor the author.
Dr. Seuss Enterprises that carries the responsibility of preserving his legacy made the decision to cancel publishing a total of six books he penned. I can’t help but wonder will one of those six still be introduced to my son this week? The six books in his collection to receive this current status, if your curious as I too was, I list below.
- “And to think I Saw it on Mulberry Street”
- “If I Ran the Zoo”
- “On Beyond Zebra”
- “Scrambled Eggs Super”
- “McElligot’s Pool”
- “The Cat’s Quizzer”
Undoubtedly these books being banned today is a sign of the times, an optimistic evolution of humanity is what I’d like to believe. Yet, in my attempt to retrieve information on this author today, I came across the now exorbitant prices being paid to obtain the newly infamous books. Ebay is reporting these books being sold for upwards of 700 dollars today,on Dr. Seuss’s birthday. I am rather anxious to hear from my son on the book selection his school has deemed fit for celebrating this coming week with.
I'm still left wandering who is Dr. Seuss?
“Always remember you are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem,smarter than you think and twice as beautiful as you’ve ever imagined”
-Dr. Seuss
