There’s a book called The Sneetches by Dr. Seuss I used to read to my first-grade Brownies Girl Scout troops when there was some talk about who had a vest on at school and who didn’t. The book’s about a group of creatures called Sneetches; some of whom have “stars” and feel superior because of it; some don’t. I’d written an undergrad educational Psych paper on the societal meanings in Seuss books, of which there are many:
Geisel's books express his views on a wide variety of social and political issues: The Lorax (1971), about environmentalism and anti-consumerism; The Sneetches (1961), about racial equality; The Butter Battle Book (1984), about the arms race; Yertle the Turtle(1958), about Adolf Hitler and anti-authoritarianism; How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1957), criticizing the economic materialism and consumerism of the Christmas season; and Horton Hears a Who! (1954), about anti-isolationism and internationalism.
A few years ago, several Seuss books were removed by the estate for unintended racist imagery. Calling the work of Dr. Seuss racist doesn’t account for a full understanding of him or his work. Seuss, the pen name of Theodor Geisel, would’ve agreed to the cancellation of the books—if alive today perhaps he might’ve re-illustrated offensive half-century old images as he was known to modify his existing works to avoid offensiveness. The liberal Democrat was awarded the Legion of Merit by the U.S. Army after volunteering when he was too old to be drafted, and is also a Pulitzer, Emmy, and Academy award winner who spent a lifetime creating more anti-fascist biting political cartoons than children’s books.
Although not removed from the catalogue, The Sneetches has long been controversial because it’s a children’s book about racism. That makes it eligible for a ban by many: one school official stopped reading it to a class when one kid pointed out the book was about racism. A piece in The Hill stated “‘The Sneetches’ is too radical for some and not radical enough for others.” Racism is the Horton elephant in the proverbial living room, but is it better to talk about it or walk around it? Seems like having conversations, even as early as a 1961 children’s book, can’t be bad.
As a German Jewish immigrant, Theodor Geisel drew over 400 political cartoons between 1941-43 just for one left-wing political magazine, PM:
Drawing in his signature style of swooping trees with cloud-like leaves, Seuss lambasted Hitler and everything he stood for. In his cartoons he rendered the fascist dictator as a mad scientist, a trophy hunter, and a bureaucrat giving orders to the devil. Although somewhat childlike in their aesthetic, Seuss’ drawings tackled the most terrifying 20th-century issues plaguing Germany and beyond.
I’m not an apologist for him or deny that many images in his books or cartoons are racist; they are—particularly his depiction of Asians after World War II. And I don’t want to make the “Boomers don’t know any better” argument (Geisel was born in 1904, so he’s before that time). I just think that with everything going on, the symbolism of the Sneetches and the separation of power along democratic and fascist lines is poignant in a frightening and razor-sharp way.
In the book Dr. Seuss Goes to War, Art Spiegelman describes his wartime cartoons as:
“Very impressive evidence of cartooning as an art of persuasion,” Spiegelman explains how they “rail against isolationism, racism, and anti-Semitism with a conviction and fervor lacking in most other American editorial pages of the period… virtually the only editorial cartoons outside the communist and black press that decried the military’s Jim Crow policies and Charles Lindbergh’s anti-Semitism”. Dr Seuss, he argues, “made these drawings with the fire of honest indignation and anger that fuels all real political art.”
Note the shirt of the mother in the political cartoon above. Geisel died in San Diego, California in 1991. People love him or hate him. He cheated on his wife, who took her life and then he married his lover, so you could hate him for that. Hate him or love him for getting drunk while he was the editor of the Jack-o-lantern at Dartmouth in 1924 during Prohibition, and changing his name to Seuss so he could still write. What I think about now is how biting and necessary his political cartoons would be today.