Posted on February 28, 2019 at 4:00 PM by Sadye Scott-Hainchek
The depictions of minorities in many classic works have received intense scrutiny in recent years.
That scrutiny has inspired lively (to put it nicely) debate but rarely much conclusive resolution.
Case in point? The works of Dr. Seuss.
NPR’s Code Switch took a look at the controversy in select children’s books — referencing in particular And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street and If I Ran The Zoo — and how educators across the country have reacted.
This isn’t new news; in 2017, the National Education Association rebranded Read Across America Day, celebrated around Dr. Seuss’s birthday (March 2), to include more modern, diverse voices.
But it popped back up — and into the consciousness of childless people who don’t teach, like the newswire team at Fussy — thanks to a new study published in Research on Diversity in Youth Literature.
Researchers Katie Ishizuka and Ramon Stephens, according to NPR, found that all of the characters of color in Seuss’s books were “depicted through racist caricatures."
Add to that the knowledge that Seuss performed in full blackface in a minstrel show that he himself wrote, and it’s safe to say that the conversations about his work won’t end anytime soon.
Read the full article on Seuss in schools on NPR's website.
Categories: Today in Books