For nearly two decades, Read Across America, the country’s biggest celebration of literacy, was built around the work of a writer.
It is no accident that the annual event, launched by the National Education Association in 1998, begins on March 2, the birthday of Theodor Geisel, also known as Dr. Seuss, who died in La Jolla in 1991. Usually, young readers gather join your teachers at week-long festivities that include reading aloud and parties where they dress up like Lorax, Thing 1, Thing 2 and other beloved characters. In 2010, nearly 300 children gathered at the Library of Congress to hear First Lady Michelle Obama read “The Cat in the Hat. “
On many campuses, the tradition continued. But in some schools, including in LA County, educators cut ties with Geisel’s work, choosing to follow the latest NEA guidelines and focus on “diversity and inclusion”.
Events related to this year’s celebration may have seemed like a sudden and unforeseen change in the program. President Joe Biden omitted any mention of Dr. Seuss from his Read Across America message; the author’s estate announced that it would no longer publish six books considered to contain offensive material; and reports circulated that Loudon County, Virginia, banned his books. Some conservatives were quick to declare that the “culture of cancellation” suddenly came to our green eggs and ham.
In fact, Virginia County did not ban its books, but only released guidelines – in 2019 – suggesting a pivot toward more diverse reading. Read Across America has been issuing the same guidance since 2018. And in recent years, educators across the country have increasingly concluded that other books can better promote literacy and inclusion at the same time.
Letitia Avalos, who teaches in kindergarten at Van Deene Avenue Elementary School in Torrance, came to that conclusion independently.
She first heard accusations of racism in Dr. Seuss’ books last year. But because “sometimes things are taken out of context”, she decided to do her own research.
What Avalos discovered was disturbing: especially early in his career, before writing as Dr. Seuss, Geisel drew racist cartoons and advertisements depicting blacks, Jews, Indians, Asians, Mexicans and Muslims in stereotyped and degrading ways. During World War II, he supported the internment of Japanese Americans. At the “Waiting for the Home Sign, ”For example, he portrayed a mass of cartoonish Japanese Americans lining up to pick up explosives, reinforcing the perception that they posed a threat to the country.
But it wasn’t just cartoons, for which he later expressed some regret. As his estate, Dr. Seuss Enterprises, acknowledged earlier this week, offensive images sometimes infiltrated his work for children. The company announced that it would stop publishing six books – including “And Think I Saw Mulberry Street”, which launched his career as Dr. Seuss – that “portray people in ways that are painful and wrong”.
A few years earlier, two researchers made an even broader statement. Ramón Stephens, a black PhD candidate at UC San Diego, joined Katie Ishizuka, whose grandparents were held in internment camps, to examine more than 2,200 characters in 50 of Geisel’s books.
The study identified 45 “colored characters” in the works, 2% of the total. Among them, Ishizuka and Stephens found that 43 have “East Asian stereotyped characteristics” or turbans and two are identified as “Africans”. The researchers also note that all of their colored characters are males presented in “subservient, exoticized or dehumanized roles”.
“Beyond the Zebra!” and “And to think I saw it on Mulberry Street” are two of the six titles that will no longer be published by Dr. Seuss’ estate. The others are “If I Ran the Zoo”, “McElligot’s Pool”, “Scrambled Eggs Super!” and “The Cat’s Quizzer”.
(Scott Olson / Getty Images)
Ishizuka and Stephens also discuss “Horton and the Who’s World!” By Geisel Dr. Seuss Enterprises often considers the book a text that promotes tolerance, and many have come to interpret it as an apology for World War II propaganda. But Geisel “never issued a real, explicit or direct apology, or retraction of his anti-Japanese propaganda,” write Ishizuka and Stephens.
In 2017, the researchers sent their findings to the NEA, calling on the association to reconsider its focus on Dr. Seuss. When their study was published two years later, they had achieved their goal. In 2018, the NEA removed all Geisel books in its Read Across America resource calendar, replacing them with several books and authors.
When asked what prompted the NEA to closeyour partnership with Dr. Seuss Enterprises, a spokesman said: “We shifted our focus to celebrate a nation of diverse readers, presenting books in which all students can see themselves.”
During Read Across America Day, Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff chose “I disagree: Ruth Bader Ginsburg Makes Her Mark” for their official reading aloud, which was presented by Conscious Kid – a platform founded by Ishizuka and Stephens.
In schools in Los Angeles, educators were making similar choices. Avalos, the teacher at Torrance, said what she learned about Seuss last year was “a drag.” But in her disappointment, she saw an opportunity.
“There are many other books out there that can give us words that rhyme or creative creatures and worlds, like he did,” she said. This week, Avalos’ Read Across America had traditional elements (although more from Zoom this year), including guest readers and “crazy hat day”. But instead of Seuss titles, she and her “little ones” liked books like “Kissing eyes on street corners, ”A short story about a girl of Chinese descent who redefines the standards of beauty.
As Avalos read the book to his students, he noticed that some of them were laughing and pulling their eyes. She used it as a teaching moment.
“We don’t do that,” she told them. “It can hurt someone’s feelings.” For her, learning to read involves learning respect and dignity as well.
At Micheltorena Street Elementary School in Silver Lake, Principal Nichole Sakellarion said the national pivot away from Dr. Seuss informed his decision to do the same. But at his school, this was not a radical change.
On its two-language immersion campus, where students learn to read and write in English and Spanish, inclusive reading is “our bread and butter of what we do every day,” said Sakellarion. “So, it fit perfectly with what we were already doing.”
On the campus of the Camino Nuevo Charter Academy in Harvard Heights, sophomore professor Kathia García celebrated Read Across America with Dr. Seuss every year – until 2021.
Daughter of Salvadoran immigrants, García grew up a few blocks from the school, which mainly serves families with roots in Mexico and Central America. She still remembers laughing while reading Dr. Seuss’ “Hop On Pop” when she was 5 years old. But she also remembers feeling uncomfortable when examining his books during the course to obtain his teaching credential.
Later, in conversations with her co-workers, she discussed the lack of diversity in her books, in which the few non-white characters “looked like caricatures of stereotypes”.
As part of her school’s planning committee, she helped change Read Across America on its campus.
“After everything that happened last summer,” she said, referring to the protests against racism and police brutality, “We felt it would be wrong to have a whole week with activities centered around such a troubled person.”
As last year was so difficult for students and educators, she and her colleagues decided to make compassion this year’s theme – “for us, our community, our school, our families and the world”.
First Lady Michelle Obama reads Dr. Seuss’ book “Green Eggs and Ham” for children during Read Across America in 2010.
(Tim Sloan / AFP via Getty Images)
Some of the changes to their Read Across America festivities are cosmetic. Instead of making students dress up as their favorite Dr. Seuss character, they were encouraged to take inspiration from any favorite book.
The real change was in this week’s read-aloud selections. Instead of “Green eggs and ham” and the like, students engaged with “The reflection in me, ”Which García describes as a text“ about having positive conversations with yourself ”. “The mess we made”It allowed students to face the environmental crisis. And on Friday, the teachers read the Spanish translation of “Fourteen cows across America,” a nonfiction book about a gift from the Maasai in Kenya to the United States after Septe. 11 attacks.
“As I grew up, I read all these books, like ‘Baby Sitters Club’ and Nancy Drew, and all of these were characters that I loved, but there weren’t many that looked like me or sounded like me,” said García. “I want my students to be able to connect with the characters they read about. But I also want you to see how big the world is. “
Does this mean that Dr. Seuss will never see a classroom again? Is your reputation permanently tarnished? Philip Nel, a professor at Kansas State University, has written several books about Dr. Seuss, including “Was the cat in the hat black ?: The hidden racism of children’s literature and the need for diverse books.” But he believes that the author’s legacy can be reexamined without being erased.
Nel supports Dr. Seuss Enterprises’ decision to stop publishing these six books and rejects the arguments that this amounts to censorship, because they will still be available in libraries.
Dr. Seuss’s estate, which raised $ 33 million in 2020, “You are taking responsibility for what you are putting into the world and what you are profiting from,” he said. “By removing books that promote stereotypes, he made a moral decision.” He claims that Geisel experienced an evolution in his thinking, although not a complete transformation.
In its statement earlier this week, the company said that its decision “is only part of our commitment and our broader plan to ensure that the Dr. Seuss Enterprises catalog represents and supports all communities and families”. When asked about details about this plan, the company told The Times by email that “it will continue to expand its initiatives”. You have no plans to stop publishing or promoting any other books.
If the company really wants to make an impact, Nel said, it should consider using its platform to raise other voices – just as Rick Riordan, author of the “Percy Jackson & the Olympians” series, did with black and LGBTQ authors.
This, he added, would improve the company’s image. “I suspect that they realized that racism is not good for the brand,” added Nel. “And so, you could go a step further and align your brand with a number of books. There is a capitalist incentive for you to do the right thing. “But there are bigger issues at stake, he said. Children’s books are rarely taken seriously, “but they are, in fact, the most important. These are the books we use to first discover who we are, what we believe, who is important. “