Why some Dr. Seuss books were discontinued
USA TODAY’s Claire Mulroy explains how publishers handled author Theodor Geisel’s complicated legacy when publishing new Dr. Seuss books.
SAN DIEGO – In the fall of 1989, Kathy Goldsmith flew from New York City to San Diego and slept in Theodor Geisel’s guest room. Geisel was frail and had grown a beard to hide the effects of surgery for oral cancer. His wife Audrey was worried that he would not live to finish his current project. Goldsmith, a longtime art director, came to get “Oh, The Places You’ll Go!” Cross the finish line.
Every day, she helped Geisel cut squares from a huge color palette and place them on the storyboard. He rested in between. The notorious perfectionist was obsessed with color. If he marks the sketch as “105,” that means he wants 10% yellow, 0 magenta, and 50% cyan.
Goldsmith, who was chatting with USA TODAY from a Seuss-themed conference room at Penguin Random House in New York, remembers taking the artwork home on the plane. She got into a scuffle with the steward, who tried to take it from her. “If I have to, I’ll buy you a seat at this art,” she thought.
It’s been a year and a half since “Ah, the place to go!” After the book was published, Geisel died at the age of 87. Almost 35 years later, his books continue to chronicle American childhood, but they are not without controversy.
Some readers have turned away from Seuss because of the racist and insensitive illustrations in Geisel’s books and comics. In 2021, Dr. Seuss Enterprises stopped publishing six books for this reason. And sales skyrocketed, earning it 6th place out of the top 10 on USA TODAY’s best-selling books list the following week.
Now, a posthumously published book discovered in Seuss’s archives, “Sing the 50 United States!” sold about 92,000 copies in its first four weeks of release, according to Circana BookScan.
As we celebrate America’s 250th anniversary, we’re looking back at quintessentially American moments, people, and media. Geisel is one such figure, a man who revolutionized children’s literature and rose above the various sides of political debate.
When Theodor Geisel encouraged American children to read
Long before he became Dr. Seuss, Geisel was a burgeoning cartoonist and advertising illustrator.
But a 1954 Life magazine article changed everything. The article claimed that literacy rates were declining because children were bored with Dick and Jane primers. Geisel had already published several books, including “Horton Hears a Who!” and “If I run a zoo.” An editor at Houghton Mifflin asked Geisel to write an engaging book using only words from a vocabulary list for young learners. Geisel submitted “The Cat in the Hat.”
Geisel’s funny and colorful stories became an antidote to boring children’s books. Besides fun rhyming schemes and silly illustrations, Dr. Seuss’ books also prioritized life lessons about individuality, wonder, kindness, and equality. He wanted reading to be easy and fun for children.
“He saw himself as a writer first and an illustrator second,” Goldsmith says.
However, Geisel was particular about his art. He wasn’t afraid to send back finished prints because the colors weren’t right. Goldsmith remembers Geisel redesigning the cover of The Butter Battle Book just to go back to the original.
“He wasn’t confrontational, he wasn’t mean, he didn’t want to hurt your feelings,” Goldsmith says. “But he loved his colors.”
In addition to his books, Geisel was an editor at Beginner Books, a Random House publication he co-founded with publisher Phyllis Cerf. Every book he published bore his stamp of approval: “Go, Dog. Go!” Written by PD Eastman. It is often mistakenly remembered as a Dr. Seuss book. Goldsmith recalls strict “rules” about what should be included in art and writing. He was a tough editor, said Susan Brandt, CEO of Dr. Seuss Enterprises (DSE), who viewed his manuscript notes in the archives.
“He didn’t mince words,” Brandt says. “There was no ‘let me sugar it’ thing.”
Geisel left a mixed legacy.
According to Penguin Random House Children’s Books, more than 800 million Dr. Seuss books have been sold. Some of our best-selling books include “Green Eggs and Ham” (over 24 million copies), “The Cat in the Hat” (over 20 million copies), and “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!” (over 20 million copies). The latter sells over a million copies each year and is forever the graduation gift of choice.
But not all are fondly remembered.
In 2019, the NAACP called for the censorship of all Dr. Seuss books and works in public schools and libraries due to images that “dehumanize and degrade” people of color and other marginalized groups. On Geisel’s birthday in 2021, DSE announced that it would cease publishing and licensing six books: “I Saw It on Mulberry Street”, “If I Ran the Zoo”, “McEligo’s Pool”, “The Cat Quiz”, and “Beyond the Zebras”. and “Scrambled eggs super!”
“These books are hurtful and portray people in the wrong way,” DSE said in a press release.
This decision was controversial. In a 2021 statement, the National Coalition Against Censorship said it was “disturbed” by the act and argued that it was better to “criticize the text” rather than “remove it.” Some questioned why these books had not been revised in the same way that other children’s books, such as the Hardy Boys series and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, have been “quietly updated to remove racist content,” the Guardian reported in 2021. Seuss himself revised books such as Mulberry Street during his lifetime.
Brandt said a panel of experts helped audit the books before taking them out.
“I don’t think there was a wrong decision. We just wanted to make a statement and stand by it and say, ‘This is who we are. We support our community.’ And we thought a stronger statement would be that we didn’t want to support these books anymore,” Brandt says.
Dr. Seuss was “both anti-racist and racist”
Racism also appears in Geisel’s early works. For example, his wartime propaganda comics included stereotypical and racist depictions of Japanese people.
In 1976, Geisel acknowledged that these cartoons were “hurried and embarrassingly poorly drawn, full of many snap judgments that any political cartoonist would have to make.” But he stopped short of apologizing.
There were many times in Geisel’s career when he appeared to be against racism, violence, and inequality. “Horton Hears a Who” is an allegory about the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so it is considered by many to be an apology. He dedicated it to a Japanese friend. The Des Moines Register called “Horton” “a rhyming lesson in protecting minorities and their rights.” “The Lorax” continues to inspire environmental action. “Sneetches” and “Yertle the Turtle” criticized anti-Semitism and Adolf Hitler. and “The Butter Battle Book” satirized the Cold War and the nuclear arms race.
Philip Nel, a children’s author and author of “Was the Cat in the Hat Black?” says it’s more complicated than saying Geisel was once a racist and then “realized the error of his ways.”
“What’s interesting to me is that at the same time he’s writing a book that recycles stereotypes, he’s also writing a message book that makes a positive, progressive, inclusive political statement. He doesn’t understand that separation. He doesn’t realize how his visual imagination is steeped in racist caricature,” Nell says. “People often want to either defend Seuss or criticize Seuss, but I don’t think they’re right either way. I think you want to look at him critically, and then you’ll see his flaws, and all of those flaws and then some will really upset you.”
Preserving Dr. Seuss’ Legacy
Brandt said DSE will instead focus on books with “universal messages” that both parents and children will enjoy.
“We’re all products of our times, and he’s trapped in his time, but Dr. Seuss Enterprises is not,” Brandt says.
Geisel’s second wife founded DSE to preserve and further his legacy. Brandt said Audrey, who passed away in 2018, viewed DSE as a “caretaker” who prioritized quality and attention to detail. This includes a robust defense of intellectual property and copyright infringement.
One of the biggest challenges right now is getting kids’ attention everywhere they can get it, whether it’s reading stories on YouTube, travel experiences, film adaptations, or new books. For example, Seuss Studios is a new print publication that allows various authors to pull unused Geisel illustrations and use them in new children’s books. Lara Watkins was one such writer, using a sketch of an insect as the main character in “Hello, Sun!” She says she has an affinity for Seuss’s “foolishness.”
“Books are the foundation,” Brandt says. “Everything we do does no harm.”
In some cases, “do no harm” means protecting your legacy from further scandal. At the Dr. Seuss Archives at the University of California, San Diego, Brandt and archivist Linda Corey Claassen ponder the fate of a 1940s Narragansett beer tray featuring the “Chief Gansett” character illustrated by Geisel.
“Honestly, if we put this on display now, we would get so many letters because of the way Native Americans are portrayed,” Claassen says.
Back in New York, Goldsmith said there are works in the archives that will never see the light of day. The first is that I worked on it almost to completion, but then decided to back out.
“We felt it wasn’t appropriate for today’s market. It may have been appropriate for the market when he was alive, but we thought perhaps publishing it wasn’t serving him,” she says.
Why not?
“I’m reluctant to go there,” she says.
Two of Seuss’ most iconic books, The Cat in the Hat and How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, will turn 70 next year. Maintaining Geisel’s legacy requires taking the characters “to great places,” but there are certainly some things that Seuss’s custodians won’t take them to.
Claire Mulroy is USA TODAY’s books reporter, covering hot releases, chatting with authors, and diving into reading culture. please find her on instagramsubscribe weekly book newsletter Or tell her what you’re reading cmulroy@usatoday.com.
