This webpage discusses the contents of one of the six books that Dr. Seuss Enterprises withdrew from print on March 2, 2021. An overview discussion is here.
In "Scrambled Eggs Super!" (1953), Peter T. Hooper tells his little sister about the wonderful dish he cooked "only last Tuesday," scrambling eggs that he and his helpers collected from many a distant locale.
I only found one character in this book who could be taken as a specific ethnic caricature; I don't know if the publishers found that to be enough, or if (as was apparently the case in some of the other five books removed from print) they also wanted to remove characters who are shown mainly as exotic facets of their locations, even without caricature. For example, these egg hunters from Fa-Zoal in the far north look more like American or European explorers in the Amundsen/Scott mold than any kind of "Eskimo" stereotype.
Here are a few others from different places.
These guys appear to be from Motta-fa-Potta-fa-Pell, which is one of the "countries that no one can spell" in "If I Ran The Zoo".
This is the one character to whose portrayal I'm pretty sure the publishers objected. Ali helps Peter T. Hooper by climbing Mt. Strookoo to fetch the egg of a Mt. Strookoo Cuckoo, even though to make it back he has to get past her flock of "big pals." Again, I don't know if this single instance was enough for the publishers to decide to pull the book; I present the others above so you can judge for yourself.
To
Next Book
To
Main PageOriginal material here is copyright 2022 by Mark Looper, but obviously I claim no ownership of the images or text that I reproduce here from the works of Dr. Seuss, which are copyright by Dr. Seuss Enterprises. I reproduce them here under terms of scholarly and journalistic fair use. Reuse of my copyrighted material is authorized under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0).
new 1 March 2022