Contrarian Librarian vs. Dr. Seuss

News item:  Massachusetts Elementary School Librarian rejects First Lady’s gift of Dr. Seuss books, calling them “racist propaganda.”

 

The things that you learn when you go back to school
Some of them hard, but a lot of them cool
Like ways you can measure the height of a tree
And who first established the land of the free

And how many elements go into steel
And why breakfast is our most meaningful meal
And what you should never put into a freezer
And who wrote the powerful play Julius Caesar

Plus, alas, a new subject that won’t tax your brain
Because it’s so totally numb and inane
The good Doctor Seuss has now given offense
To a school librarian shorn of all sense

She finds that his works, which enthralled generations
Are filled with the very worst kind of sensations
They’re not about Grinches or Hortons or Whos,
They’re not about Elephants, Tigers or Zoos

They’re not about Loraxes, Yertles or Hats
They’re not about Green Eggs or Zebras or Cats
No, they’re chock full of racism, bias and worse
If only you know how to decode his verse

Theodore Geisel was the name of the Doc
In life he was found in the liberal bloc
But that was back then, when his books were adored
Not now when those works are reviled and abhorred

Of course, it just might be the source of the rift
Is the First Lady’s try at a whimsical gift
What better way is there to get back at Trump?
So what if some kid lit winds up in the dump,

Along with a poet enjoyed to the max
Whose rhyming will soon be expunged from the stacks
Replaced by some paranoid partisan chatter?
And what of the students? Since when do they matter?

Author

  • Stefan Kanfer

    Stefan Kanfer, former book review editor and senior editor for Time magazine, writes widely for City Journal on political, social, and cultural topics. He is the author of more than a dozen books, among them The Last Empire, the story of the De Beers diamond company; Stardust Lost, about the Yiddish Theater in America; biographies of Groucho Marx, Marlon Brando, Lucille Ball and Humphrey Bogart; plus novels and thrillers.

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