If I Ran the Zoo

What Hacker News says

1. NeverFadeMar 2021
   One of the books they banned, "And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street", was Dr. Seuss's breakthrough work, and certainly not "obscure". Another, "If I Ran the Zoo", is widely considered among his best.

   These are both very much among his classics.

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2. NeverFadeMar 2021
   No, revisionism is pretending canonical books like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_to_Think_That_I_Saw_It_on_... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_I_Ran_the_Zoo are not important just because you don't remember them.

   Nobody will miss these books because they have been erased. Nobody missed banned books in the USSR either.

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3. agentwigglesFeb 2023
   Wow. This is so gross. I was a bit put out by the Dr. Seuss controversy a few years back, but at least in those cases, they just stopped printing the books (and, to be fair, the caricatures of various ethnic groups in If I Ran The Zoo are pretty bad).

   It feels much more disturbing, though, to just silently update the language in the books to be more in line with modern sensibilities. Dahl was a man of his time, and as a general rule his books have good morals and values exhibited in them. They are perfect children's books, not afraid to dip into a little darkness or to poke fun at the adults who run the world, and that's a huge part of why they've been so successful and universally loved.

   The mental attitude and sense of self-superiority it must take to feel comfortable taking the knife to something so well loved is really mind-boggling to me. I am very happy that I bought our collection of Dahl's books before this happened.

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4. thretJul 2022
   59. You will nerd

   Wikipedia: The first documented appearance of the word nerd is as the name of a creature in Dr. Seuss's book If I Ran the Zoo (1950).

   I realise it is a typo.

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5. adolphMar 2021
   This CBC article makes a claim on a single cartoon.

   "Even Dr. Seuss — liberal and good on anti-black sentiment, good on antisemitism — even this guy was totally blind about the Asian side of the picture," he said.

   NPR claims "Dr. Seuss Books Can Be Racist, But Students Keep Reading Them"

   But some of Seuss' classics have been criticized for the way they portray people of color. In And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street, for example, a character described as Chinese has two lines for eyes, carries chopsticks and a bowl of rice, and wears traditional Japanese-style shoes. In If I Ran the Zoo, two men said to be from Africa are shown shirtless, shoeless and wearing grass skirts as they carry an exotic animal. Outside of his books, the author's personal legacy has come into question, too — Seuss wrote an entire minstrel show in college and performed as the main character in full blackface.

   https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2019/02/26/695966537...

   Paper cited by NPR is: "The Cat is Out of the Bag: Orientalism, AntiBlackness, and White Supremacy in Dr. Seuss's Children's Books"

   To date, there have been several book-length studies of Dr. Seuss, including Ruth K. MacDonald’s Dr. Seuss, Judith and Neil Morgan’s Dr. Seuss and Mr. Geisel, Richard H. Minear’s Dr. Seuss Goes to War, and Charles D. Cohen’s The Seuss, the Whole Seuss, and Nothing but the Seuss (11). These authors have made invaluable contributions to the literature by preserving and documenting Seuss’ extensive collection of published works, and their work is cited extensively in this paper. A limitation, however, is that none of the authors represent any of the marginalized groups represented in Seuss’ published works. These authors, who appear to be homogeneously White, have normalized, defended, minimized, and even erased examples of racism within their analyses of Seuss’ works. For instance, of the book If I Ran the Zoo—one of the most egregious in terms of depicting people of color through racist caricatures—Ruth K. MacDonald writes, “Occasional stereotypes of native peoples—potbellied, thick-lipped blacks from Africa, squinty-eyed Orientals—may offend some modern readers, but in general, the book delights readers of several ages at several levels."

   Horton Hears a Who! is one of Dr. Seuss' books widely cited as promoting tolerance. . . . Regardless of the intention of the book, the impact is that it reinforces themes of White supremacy, Orientalism, and White saviorism. It positions the Whos in a deficit-based framework as the dominant, paternalistic Horton enacts the White Savior Industrial Complex.

   https://sophia.stkate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1050&c...

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6. ojnabieootMar 2021
   This is misleading and approaching a lie. eBay only allows critically-annotated copies of Mein Kampf which are designed for scholars. I am sure that a copy of “If I Ran The Zoo” with a sociologist critically annotating the abhorrent racism would be permitted on eBay.

   From one of the listed items:

   > This item has been listed previously. eBay removed it with this reminder of the guidelines:

   > "You listed the book Mein Kampf, but it is not a critically annotated edition. eBay only allows critically annotated versions of Mein Kampf to be listed on the site. While we appreciate that you chose to utilize our site, we must ask that you please not relist in this case."

   > This is their policy and this edition is compliant with that policy.

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