BOSTON (AP) – Six books by Dr. Seuss, including “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street” and “If I Ran the Zoo,” will no longer be published because of racist and insensitive images, the business that preserves and protects said the legacy of the author Tuesday.
“These books portray people in harmful and wrong ways,” Dr. he told The Associated Press in a statement coinciding with the birthday of the late author and illustrator.
“Stopping the sale of these books is only part of our commitment and our broader plan to ensure that Dr. Seuss’s catalog of companies represents and supports all communities and families,” he said.
The other books affected are “McElligot’s Pool,” “On Beyond Zebra !,” “Scrambled Eggs Super!” The “The Cat’s Quizzer.”
The decision to stop publishing and selling the books was made last year after months of discussion, the company told AP.
“Dr. Seuss Enterprises listened to and received feedback from our audiences, including professors, academics, and subject matter specialists, as part of our review process. Then we worked with a group of experts, including educators, to review our catalog of degrees, ”he said.
The books of Dr. Seuss, who was born Theodor Seuss Geisel in Springfield, Massachusetts, on March 2, 1904, have been translated into dozens of languages and also in Braille and are sold in more than 100 countries. He died in 1991.
It remains popular, earning about $ 33 million before taxes in 2020, up from $ 9.5 million five years ago, the company said. Forbes ranked him as No. 2 in the highest paid dead celebrities of 2020, behind only the late pop star Michael Jackson.
As much as Dr. Seuss adore millions of people around the world for the positive values of many of his works, including environmentalism and tolerance, there has been growing criticism in recent years about how blacks, Asians and others are they are attracted to some of their most important topics. beloved children’s books, as well as in his previous 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 disregarded Seuss for several years and encouraged a more diverse reading list for children.
School districts across the country have also moved away from Dr. Seuss, which has caused Loudoun County, Virginia, schools on the outskirts of Washington, DC, to expand rumors last month that completely banned books.
“Research in recent years has revealed strong racial nuances 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 10-book gift from Seuss from First Lady Melania Trump, who said many of her works were “imbued with racist propaganda, caricatures and harmful stereotypes.”
In 2018, a museum of Dr. Seuss in his hometown, Springfield, removed a mural which included an Asian stereotype.
“The Cat with the Hat,” one of Seuss’s most popular books, has also received criticism, 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 popular children’s series have been criticized in recent years for alleged racism.
In the 2007 book, “Should We Burn Babar?”, Author and educator Herbert R. Kohl claimed that the books “Babar the Elephant” were celebrations of colonialism for the way the title character emerges from the jungle and, later, he re-civilizes his fellow animals.
One of the books, “Babar’s Travels,” was removed from the shelves of a British library in 2012 because of his alleged stereotypes of Africans. Critics have also rebuked “Curious George” books for their premise of a white man carrying an African monkey home.
And Laura Ingalls Wilder’s depictions of Native Americans in her novels “Little House on the Prairie” have been blamed so often that the American Library Association removed her name in 2018 from an award for accomplishment. of the life he distributes each year.
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AP national writer Hillel Italie contributed from New York.