On Read Across America Day, Dr. Seuss Gets the Boot

Happen to have any copies of To Think I Saw it on Mulberry Street or If I Ran The Zoo sitting on your kids’ bookshelf? If so, you’re sitting on some serious collector’s items… or contraband, depending on who you ask.

You may be wondering why on earth some of the world’s most popular kids’ books are fetching $1,500 on eBay overnight. You’d think it’s impossible for Dr. Seuss-centric discussions to get farther-fetched than a human-sized-cat that babysits, or an elephant that tries to save a speck society on a flower—but not so. If the last year taught us anything, it’s that things can always get weirder.

And dumber.

This week, citing feedback from educators, academics, and specialists in the field, Dr. Seuss Enterprises—the company that oversees Dr. Seuss’ book distribution—pulled six books from the printing presses. Yes, you read that right. We’ve come full-circle. The author of Horton Hears a Who and The Grinch is cancel culture’s latest victim.

Here’s the statement from Dr. Seuss Enterprises, released Tuesday:

Today, on Dr. Seuss’s Birthday, Dr. Seuss Enterprises celebrates reading and also our mission of supporting all children and families with messages of hope, inspiration, inclusion, and friendship.

We are committed to action. To that end, Dr. Seuss Enterprises, working with a panel of experts, including educators, reviewed our catalog of titles and made the decision last year to cease publication and licensing of the following titles:  And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, If I Ran the Zoo, McElligot’s Pool, On Beyond Zebra!, Scrambled Eggs Super!, and The Cat’s Quizzer.  These books portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong.

Ceasing sales of these books is only part of our commitment and our broader plan to ensure Dr. Seuss Enterprises’s catalog represents and supports all communities and families.

Now, to be fair, Dr. Seuss Enterprises is a private company. They could pull every one of those books off the printing presses, and would be well within their rights to do so. But when classics from the children’s canon are being thrown into the proverbial fires, it’s a moment to stop and reflect on how we got here… and where we’re headed.

Do some digging, and you’ll find that this all started a couple years ago on Read Across America Day. This “holiday” was started by the National Education Association, falls on March 2nd —the late Dr. Seuss’ birthday—and was originally centered on celebrating his works.

But on Read Across America Day in 2019, a progressive group called “Learning for Justice” released an article called “It’s Time to Talk About Dr. Seuss.” It cites a study that claims Seuss’ works are full of “orientalism, anti-blackness, and white supremacy,” and calls for the removal of his books from the mainstream of childrens’ literature.

For background, Learning for Justice serves as the education arm of the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and is known for promoting “social justice” and “racial justice” to kids as young as five years old. They’re fine with values being pushed on kids, as long as they’re the right kind of values. Dr. Seuss isn’t their first target, and he certainly won’t be the last.

I don’t say this to be all doom and gloom, but if you’re a parent, you need to know what you’re dealing with here. The woke crowd wants total control of what your kids are exposed to. We’ve seen it come through as the ABCs of wokeness, as reframing America as racist—and capitalism as evil—through the 1619 Project, and now pulling Dr. Seuss from the shelves.

Are you hearing alarm bells yet?

Don’t let me be misunderstood… Dr. Seuss said some terrible things. A quick google search will yield a laundry list of stuff he believed and wrote early in his career that we’d all probably disagree with. But the world is full of authors, thinkers, and artists who were deeply flawed. Pulling books from the shelves, no matter how terrible or unpopular the views of the author may be, is a red flag that we’re more interested
in scrubbing our past than understanding it.

History, including the bad stuff, should be discussed and digested with critical thought—not sanitized or swept under the rug. This is why I wrote books that teach kids to think for themselves and look at the world around them with objectivity and curiosity…  And if this all has you feeling uneasy about the environment your kids are being educated in, The Tuttle Twins and the Education Vacation is a great place to start. Emily and Ethan can help show your kids how much there is to learn outside of the 8-3 school experience.

There has never been a better time to take the reins on the content that’s put in front of your kids. We can’t control what the world looks like, or used to look like—but we can control how we prepare our children for the future. By exposing them to ideas of a free society, your kids can grow into well-rounded thinkers, rather than social justice clones shaped by the forces of the education establishment.

The challenge ahead of us is real, but the Tuttle Twins team is here to help give your kids a voice of reason in a world gone crazy.

—Connor