{"id":87579,"date":"2025-08-23T14:20:32","date_gmt":"2025-08-23T14:20:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/87579\/"},"modified":"2025-08-23T14:20:32","modified_gmt":"2025-08-23T14:20:32","slug":"is-it-time-to-move-on-from-dr-seuss-literary-hub","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/87579\/","title":{"rendered":"Is It Time to Move On From Dr. Seuss? \u2039 Literary Hub"},"content":{"rendered":"

August 12th marks the 65th anniversary of Dr. Seuss\u2019s Green Eggs and Ham, a book whose orange cover fills me with delicious nostalgia. Svetlana Boym <\/a>defines nostalgia as \u201ca longing for a home that no longer exists or has never existed.\u201d What imaginary home do I miss so much? And why do so many of us miss this same place?<\/p>\n

As a children\u2019s librarian who also teaches a graduate course on the History of Children\u2019s Literature, I struggle with the question of how to present Dr. Seuss, aka Theodor Geisel. It is now widely known that Geisel\u2019s political cartoons during WWII and early children\u2019s books contained offensive depictions of Asian, Arctic Indigenous, Middle Eastern and African people.<\/p>\n

My students of all ages devour Seuss. In my library in Queens, NY, kindergarteners through second graders clamor for Green Eggs and Ham after binge-watching the 2019 Netflix series of the same title (and all the Grinch and Lorax movies too). I will confess: when Random House offered my school the loan of a free Grinch costume of Broadway production quality, I jumped at the chance to host a holiday event where students could help grow the Grinch\u2019s heart through acts of kindness. Geisel isn\u2019t my students\u2019 role model, but the Grinch is a fun cultural symbol that unites a variety of people. The event stirred up Seussmania, and library checkouts soared.<\/p>\n

So while I do continue to read Dr. Seuss, I also reject Geisel as a cultural ambassador for children\u2019s literature. For over two decades, schools have celebrated the National Education Association\u2019s Read Across America Day<\/a> on Dr. Seuss\u2019s birthday, March 2, with children dressing up in red and white striped hats to represent their commitment to reading\u2014as if Seuss were representative of all children\u2019s books. In 2017, Katie Ishizuka-Stephens, Director of the Conscious Kid Library, asked the NEA to reevaluate their approach.<\/p>\n

Ishizuka-Stephens\u2019s report emerged the same year that Cambridge, MA librarian Liz Phipps Soeiro made headlines for rejecting First Lady Melania Trump gift of ten Dr. Seuss books<\/a>, including Green Eggs and Ham, to her top-performing school in 2017. She described Seuss as a \u201ccliche\u201d and \u201ctired and worn ambassador of children\u2019s literature,\u201d and recommended a list of ten diverse books<\/a> instead. The ten books Soerio recommends are excellent additions to any library, but I wished for the inclusion of a silly, Mo Willems text or, better yet, a wacky book by a non-white author. Kids need to have belly laughs and almost pee their pants when reading\u2014which is something that few other authors besides Seuss can do without invoking potty humor. I\u2019m eager for more silliness.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s difficult to say why Seuss\u2019s books have gripped us for over six decades. Green Eggs and Ham is an especially mysterious text, open to multiple interpretations.<\/p>\n

The same year that Soerio wrote to Mrs. Trump, 2017, three prominent children\u2019s authors, Willems, Lisa Yee and Mike Curato, backed out of participating in an author festival to protest an offensive mural in the newly opened Wonderful World of Seuss Museum in Springfield, MA. The mural contained a \u201cjarring racial stereotype\u201d of an Asian man with chopsticks that appeared in And to Think I Saw It on Mulberry Street (1937). Seuss Enterprises and the museum later announced their decision to remove the mural<\/a>, and the authors agreed to reschedule, but weren\u2019t invited back.<\/p>\n

This same year, scholar Philip Nel published Was the Cat in the Hat Black? (2017) which cites convincing archival evidence that Geisel based the Cat on blackface minstrel shows,<\/a> in which he participated as a student in Dartmouth. Ishizuka-Stephen drew on Nels in her report, and within two years, the NEA rebranded the day around multicultural books and gradually the Cat in the Hat disappeared from Read Across America logos. Today, the initiative <\/a>seems to be going strong.<\/p>\n

Still, Seuss dominates so much of our imaginations around childhood. It may take another generation or two to reset our perspective so that Seuss isn\u2019t synonymous with children\u2019s literature. I spoke with Kesi Augustine<\/a>, PhD, a debut children\u2019s author and scholar whose research focuses on children\u2019s literature to ask for her insights. Recently when Augustine was promoting her picture book, Faith Takes the Train (HarperCollins 2025, illustrated by Mokshini), an adult reader approached her before she had even started her event.<\/p>\n

The reader asked if she was a children\u2019s author, and related that Green Eggs and Ham was his all-time favorite book. As he and Augustine engaged in a conversation about Seuss, Augustine observed the powerful nostalgia that can cast a spell on us for decades, preventing us from discovering new authors. Isn\u2019t 65 years of Green Eggs and Ham enough? What new books will become beloved for generations? \u201cWe need to let go of the idea that the lone white male author represents the pinnacle of children\u2019s literature.\u201d<\/p>\n

In reality, Augustine\u2019s book represents the direction children\u2019s literature seems to be going\u2014realistic, social justice-focused and by and about diverse people. In Faith Takes the Train, the titular character rides the New York subway with her mother, delighting in a peanut butter, jelly and honey sandwich. When a man and his son make their way through the subway car, asking for food, Faith recognizes them and wonders why no one on the train seems to care about their suffering. She envisions herself a princess building a castle of peanut butter, jelly and honey sandwiches for the hungry, and offers up the sandwich to her neighbors.<\/p>\n

I could delight in Seuss at storytime more easily if I knew that the younger generations were being educated about Geisel.<\/p>\n

Gently narrated in an authentically childlike, poetic voice, Faith is illustrated by Mokshini with lush colors and dreamy, sweeping acrylic and watercolor reminiscent of the artwork in Madeline books. It\u2019s a timeless story for which the author drew on experiences she witnessed of food insecurity during the pandemic. Faith Takes the Train is a book for the future. It even has humor. It\u2019s not the silly Seussian kind, but we need all varieties of humor in literature.<\/p>\n

While Faith may be best for children ages five to eight, the slightly younger Green Eggs and Ham audience may gravitate towards repetitive books by Salina Yoon and Mo Willems, which have a limited vocabulary. Yoon, who won the award named after Theodor Geisel, charms with her Penguin<\/a> series (Bloomsbury, 2013-223). I am searching for more books like Yoon\u2019s for this age group.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s difficult to say why Seuss\u2019s books have gripped us for over six decades. Green Eggs and Ham is an especially mysterious text, open to multiple interpretations. It has been described as a Marxist parable\u2014banned in Maoist China\u2014as well as a philosophical or mystical text. Scholars have noted that the Hebrew name Samuel means \u201cname of God.\u201d This makes the incantation \u201cSam-I-am, Sam-I-am,\u201d especially significant.<\/p>\n

In interviews, Geisel consistently stated that Green Eggs and Ham had no deeper meaning or symbolism. His publisher bet him $50 that he couldn\u2019t write a book containing only 50 one-syllable words. After many revisions over a year Geisel produced a book with 49 monosyllabic words and one multisyllabic word, \u201canywhere.\u201d The story resonated with children who push back against food offerings and authority figures.<\/p>\n

Hungry for more perspectives from the children\u2019s literary community on Green Eggs and Ham\u2019s 65th anniversary, I reached out to Pat Cummings, who has published picture books since the 1980s and was once selected for Reading Rainbow. Her first middle grade mystery, Trace (HarperCollins, 2020) is a ghost story touching on African-American history and in a haunted New York Public Library. One of my favorite of Cummings\u2019 works is a West African retelling of Beauty and the Beast authored by her husband, H. Chuku Lee. When I asked about Seuss, Cummings acknowledged that he \u201cstruck a chord\u201d but quickly added, \u201cI\u2019m not the one to comment on Green Eggs & Ham I think\u2026I never really got it\u2026You might add that I\u2019m a vegetarian\u2026 that might\u2019ve skewed my opinion.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019m envious of readers like Cummings, who never caught the Seuss bug and didn\u2019t need to purge it from their systems the way many of us librarians do. We do know that Geisel\u2019s views evolved over time, and that Horton Hears a Who (1954) and The Sneetches and Other Stories (1961) promote inclusivity and anti-discrimination, but we also know that some of Seuss\u2019s imagery in books that still circulate in libraries today can be extremely offensive.<\/p>\n

In 2021, Seuss Enterprises announced it was permanently canceling the publication of six Seuss books <\/a>due to racist stereotypes, and today those books can only be purchased as used copies. The six cancelled books will circulate in most public libraries until the physical copies wear out, after which they will not be replaced. I was able to borrow four of the six books from public libraries in New York and my own school library. However, I have removed the two copies in my school library from circulation and put them in storage.<\/p>\n

Some librarians believe that restricting or removing the offensive texts is called quiet censorship. New York children\u2019s librarian Amy McAbee, believes in promoting all Seuss books as long as the author\u2019s racism does not manifest on the page.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are few writers of children\u2019s books who are able to tap into children\u2019s innate sense of humor\u201d and use \u201cintricate wordplay,\u201d McAbee said. When reading Fox in Sox \u00a0in storytime, McAbee\u2019s youngest, pre-reading patrons delighted in \u201creciting the passage about tweedle beetles at top speed.\u201d<\/p>\n

I could delight in Seuss at storytime more easily if I knew that the younger generations were being educated about Geisel. When I visited the Seuss Museum with my children this summer, we experienced the first floor as a children\u2019s playground filled with photo opps. The second floor, geared for adults, presented early drafts of Seuss books and ephemera, but no unpacking of his political views. The light tone of the museum was ideal for my six-year-old, but I wished my thirteen-year-old could have analyzed Seuss\u2019s offensive cartoons about Japanese internment camps to better understand American history. She is ready for that.<\/p>\n

So, to borrow a line from Nels, \u201cWhat do we do with Seuss?\u201d As a past winner of the Geisel Award, children\u2019s author Grace Lin asserts in her blog<\/a>, \u201cI honor Theodor Geisel as a man who outgrew his racism and created some of the best books of children\u2019s literature of all time. And without an explanation, I abhor the single image\u201d of an Asian man with chopsticks once displayed in the Seuss Museum.<\/p>\n

Rachel G. Payne, coordinator of early childhood services at Brooklyn Public Library and debut author of Let\u2019s Rumble: A Rough and Tumble Book of Play <\/a>(Rise x Penguin Workshop, July 2025, illustrated by Jose Pimienta), does not promote Seuss because he doesn\u2019t need it. Instead, she moves towards books of the future, like her own. Payne and Pimienta\u2019s book features culturally and gender-diverse characters, and a child with a hearing aid, but it\u2019s not didactic about inclusion. The entire focus is joy and play. Like Augustine and Mokshini\u2019s Faith Takes the Train, Let\u2019s Rumble is a future classic.<\/p>\n

When Augustine encountered the bookstore shopper who seemed fixated on Seuss, she asked if he knew about Geisel\u2019s racism. The man did not, but he was ready to confront it. \u201cThat\u2019s inexcusable,\u201d he said. \u201cBut we should know what to take and what to leave behind. And we should hope the future looks back on us with compassion.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"August 12th marks the 65th anniversary of Dr. Seuss\u2019s Green Eggs and Ham, a book whose orange cover…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87580,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[457,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-87579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-books","tag-books","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87579\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}