The much anticipated Read Across America Day came and went without much fanfare as the company in charge of Dr. Suess’ legacy caved to cancel culture. Six books have been pulled from the catalog and will not be sold furthermore due to insensitive material. Ironically, Read Across America Day was created to honor children’s literacy and the iconic author, whose birthday was also March 2.
In a statement, Dr. Seuss Enterprises announced: “These books portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong.”
Educators and schools across the nation contributed to this latest bout with hysteria – this time over books with characters of all sizes, colors, shapes, and questionable species – which also describes today’s far-left progressives. Dr. Seuss Enterprises worked with educators and experts to review its catalog to come up with a plan to erase a racist past. The panel of experts helped Dr. Seuss Enterprises in deciding to end publication (among the publishers are Random House and Vanguard Press) and licensing of the books.
Did the Cat in the Hat Go Splat?
The following tomes that seemingly hurt some green, blue, or puce folks have been sent to the burn pile:
- And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street
- If I Ran the Zoo
- McElligot’s Pool
- On Beyond Zebra!
- Scrambled Eggs Super!
- The Cat’s Quizzer
What did they do to require the liberal cleansing of late? Well, on Mulberry Street, there is a Chinese restaurant featuring a man partaking in a bowl of rice, and the line: “Chinaman who eats with sticks.” Oh, the horror. Or it may have been the illustration of the Chinaman with slanted eyes that blew up commerce on Mulberry Street for good.
If I Ran the Zoo has two black men wearing what appear to be grass skirts with their hair tied above their heads. But in context with the wild and wooly characters in all Seuss books, it’s a non-starter for fans.
Oh, the Woke Don’t Get the Joke They Wear Like a Yoke
What was meant to be the Seuss organization’s woke spanking has become a bonanza of profit for the unsuspecting capitalist. After Mr. Biden signed the National Read Across America Day proclamation that excluded Dr. Seuss for the first time, the books that have been pulled from the catalog shot up in value.
Amazon warned buyers that four of the books were out of print with “limited availability” and listed a price tag from $920.99 to $4,500.
On eBay, an auction for McElligot’s Pool began in February with a starting bid amount of $4.44. This one-volume has skyrocketed to well over $900 at the time of this writing. As one might imagine, collectors are quite pleased with the latest go-’round of woke hysteria.
Mr. Biden is the first president to snub the contributions to children’s literacy by Dr. Seuss. Although there have been whisper campaigns by extreme leftist educators for years, it wasn’t really mainstream until First Lady Melania Trump attempted to gift Dr. Seuss books to Cambridgeport School in Cambridge, MA. Liz Phipps Soeiro, a library media specialist at the school, said she didn’t “lack resources” and that Dr. Suess’ “illustrations are steeped in racist propaganda, caricatures, and harmful stereotypes.” She then chided the ignorance of the Trump administration in a long, drawn-out rant. She may have forgotten that her idols, President Barack and First Lady Michelle Obama, were Seuss fans – demonstrating their respect every year of the Obama administration.
In 2016, the president opined that Seuss was “one of America’s revered wordsmiths’ who used his incredible talent to instill in his most impressionable readers universal values we all hold dear.”
As Cindy Lou Who might say, “the Grinch better not give an inch,” when the woke folk attempt to pinch a beloved Christmas story.
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Read more from Sarah Cowgill.
