Kids of all ages are invited to the General Greene pavilion on Sunday, October 8 to hear a reading of Dr. Seusss The Lorax. Well discuss how we can speak for. Celebrate Dr. Seusss birthday with lots of fun, learning and crafty Cat in the Hat activities 20 Dr. Seuss activities for the wonderful Cat in the Hat. Test your knowledge with amazing and interesting facts, trivia, quizzes, and brain teaser games on MentalFloss. Charter Communications. Your Privacy Rights Policies Go to Assist On Demand service available to residential customers only who subscribe to Spectrum TV. Change. org is a petition website operated by forprofit Change. Inc., an American certified B corporation which claims to have over 100 million users and hosts. Stock up on baby bibs and burp cloths from Baby Depot. We have a great selection of designs, characters, and styles all at low prices. Free Shipping available. Is the Cat in the Hat Racist Read Across America Shifts Away From Dr. R1Y7S_BnY/hqdefault.jpg' alt='Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax Watch Free Online' title='Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax Watch Free Online' />Seuss and Toward Diverse Books. For 2. 0 years, Read Across America has been synonymous with youngsters wearing red and white striped hats sitting down for story time on March 2, Dr. Seusss birthday. But this fall, the biggest national literacy awareness program, sponsored by the National Education Association NEA, will be shifting its focus toward a year round promotion of diverse childrens books. Its a change resulting from both a heightened awareness of representation in kid lit, as well as growing scrutiny of racial imagery in the work of the beloved childrens book author. Katie Ishizuka has been analyzing Seuss body of work for the past year. Ishizuka a cousin of Kathy Ishizuka, SLJs executive editor and her husband, Ramon Stephens, founded the Conscious Kid Social Justice Library, a subscription service which sends its subscribers monthly shipments of titles featuring multicultural characters. Stephens is a Ph. D. student in education at the University of California at San Diego, home to the Theodor Seuss Geisel Library, where he first came across a collection of the cartoonists early workWorld War II political cartoons, featuring slurs and racist drawings of Japanese Americans, portraying them as a danger to nation. Ishizuka, whose grandparents and other relatives were sent by the U. S. government to internment camps during World War II, was very upset. My grandmother was fired from her job at Seattle schools and then incarcerated, she says. This had real impact on my personal family. Thinking about how widely beloved and celebrated Seuss is as an author was another blow. In March 2. Ishizuka wrote a piece on the website Blavity about Seuss anti Japanese cartoons, along with work that used the N word and depicted blacks at a slave auction or rendered to resemble monkeys. She also pointed out images portraying Middle Eastern men as camel riding sultans and women as hyper sexualized harem dwellers. But what Ishizuka found even more troubling were racist images hidden in plain sight in Seusss popular picture books. Ishizuka, who holds a Masters degree in social work, conducted a critical race analysis of 5. Seuss and found that 9. The Cat in the Hat and blackface minstrelsyIn addition to how people of color are portrayed in his childrens books through Orientalist and anti Black stereotypes and caricatures, they are almost always presented as subservient, and peripheral to, the white characters, concludes Ishizuka in her study. She points out that the Cat in the Hat, perhaps Seuss most famous character, is based on minstrel stereotypes. The Cats physical appearance, including the Cats oversized top hat, floppy bow tie, white gloves, and frequently open mouth, mirrors actual blackface performers as does the role he plays as entertainer to the white familyin whose house he doesnt belong, says Ishizuka. She isnt the first scholar to point out racial stereotypes in Dr. Seuss picture books. Kansas State University English professor Phillip Nel recently published a book Was the Cat in the Hat Black The Hidden Racism in Childrens Literature, and the Need for Diverse Books, which examines The Cat in the Hats roots in blackface minstrelsy. However the cat, along with his striped headwear, is also associated with Read Across America, just as Clifford the Big Red Dog is synonymous with the literacy organization Reading is Fundamental. One of the reasons we partnered with Seuss 2. Steven Grant, a NEA spokesperson, who has also managed the Read Across America program since 2. That was the strategy up front, so kids would see Dr. Seusss Cat in the Hat and spark some attention. The program has successfully reached children nationwide Grant estimates that 4. Read Across America events each year. Dr. Seuss cartoon from UC San Diego Library collection. Copyright unknown. But not all families think the author should be celebrated. In March, two Japanese American children in South Pasadena, CA, saw their schools Dr. Seuss Week in conjunction with Read Across America as a chance to educate their classmates about the cartoonists role in fanning fears that led to the internment of Japanese Americans. Their teachers and administrators shut them down, wouldnt allow them to hand out the flyers, and told them school was not the appropriate place for that, says Ishizuka. To me, this was alarming and represented a serious racial justice issue. Hi-Def The Seventh Dwarf Cartoon on this page. Ishizuka also points out that black children may feel uncomfortable going to school on Read Across America Day. Its very dehumanizing for black children to be expected to wear one of those hats. In April, Ishizuka sent a copy of her 4. NEA, which organizes Read Across America. Last year was the first year in my 1. NEA that I had seen so much bubble up as far as concerned interests, says Grant, who praises Ishizukas recommendations for suggested authors and partner organizations to bring wider representation to the event. Even before Ishizuka sent the material, NEAs Read Across America advisory committee comprised of teachers, education support professionals, librarians, and others had already been discussing issues surrounding Seuss early work, based on Richard H. Minears 2. 00. 1 book Dr. Seuss Goes to War, which critiques the cartoonists early political drawings, including the anti Japanese works. Grant adds that that for the past two years, the NEA board has already shifting Read Across Americas mission towards promoting diverse literature and reaching a broader range of readers. Ishizuka and Stephens emphasize that theyre not trying to ban Dr. Seuss. Its not about reading or not reading certain books, its about raising awareness around the social and systemic bias that such books promote, says Stephens. Dr. Seuss and whiteness is a reflection of the overwhelming silence in literacy regarding matters of race, especially with both young people and white people. This fall, for the 2. Read Across America will place greater emphasis on year round literacy with its annual calendar. In its 1. 0th year in print, the calendar features monthly book recommendations along with online resources. The 2. 01. 71. 8 calendar features the theme of Building a Nation of Diverse Readers and gives monthly suggested titles for elementary, middle school, and high school students. For example, Septembers choices include All the Way to Havana by Margarita Engle, The Rooster Who Would Not Be Quiet by Carmen Agra Deedy, and The Distance Between Us by Reyna Grande. Read Across America will also be highlighting literacy events, such as El da de los niosEl da de los libros. NEA will distribute 8. NEA to offer 6. 0K in grants for diverse books. Grant says raising exposure for diverse books is one thing, but putting them in the hands of educators is another. In a lot of cases, the teacher has to buy the books with her or her own money, he explains. During the 2. 01. NEA will award 6. Over the past two years, the organization gave a total of 2. Walden Media and the Weinstein Company. Reading is Fundamental will also offer digital resources to accompany the calendar, and First Book and the publisher Lee Low Books will provide diverse titles at a discount for Title I schools. Like the story of the black and white cartoon cat, the NEA is finding that something that started off as whimsical fun might be challenging to put back into a box. Grant says Read Across America has never required participants to use Seuss material, but after 2. Seuss stuff off the bookshelves from last year. The annual Read Across America Day event may be hard to untangle from its mascot, particularly since the annual event takes place on Dr. Seuss birthday. The Read Across America logo along with all the event merchandise sold on the websitefeatures the black and white feline sitting on top of a silhouette of the United States.