Dr. Seuss

I’m writing to correct a misleading piece of information in the April article “Exiling Dr. Seuss.”  The writer states that “the company that publishes Dr. Seuss’s books decided to pull six of the late author’s titles from its publication list.”  This is inaccurate. The decision was not made by the publisher, Random House Children’s Books, but by Seuss Enterprises, which manages the licensing rights on behalf of the late author’s estate. Those literary managers asked Random House Children’s to discontinue publishing those six titles, and the publisher honored their request. These days when there is so much talk of publishers and other institutions succumbing to “cancel culture,” I believe it’s important to clarify that it was not the publisher who decided the books’ racist imagery made them were unworthy of publication—it was the author’s own heirs and representatives.

That point aside, the article does an excellent job of presenting what I believe is a thoughtful and informed decision by the Norfolk Public Library to remove the books from the children’s section but maintain them—with annotation—as part of the library’s historical collection. That decision also protects the books themselves; more than one public library has discovered that their copies of these six Seuss titles have been checked out and vanished, only to reappear on eBay priced at $1,000 or more. 

— Rachel Kahan