Six Dr. Seuss Books Are Dropped After Review Finds Imagery Offensive

Six of Dr. Seuss’s books will no longer be published after a recent review concluded they contained offensive images, the company in charge of the late author’s works said.

The decision won’t affect Dr. Seuss’s best known-works, which publisher Random House Books for Young Readers and several booksellers on Tuesday said would remain available to customers.

The review of the six books at issue—“And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street”; “If I Ran the Zoo”; “McElligot’s Pool”; “On Beyond Zebra!”; “Scrambled Eggs Super!”; and “The Cat’s Quizzer”—was conducted last year by Dr. Seuss Enterprises LP, which oversees Dr. Seuss’s publishing interests and ancillary areas.

Dr. Seuss Enterprises said in a statement that it acted because the “books portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong.”

Author Theodor Seuss Geisel, known as Dr. Seuss, in 1987.

Photo: /Associated Press

The decision was made public Tuesday because it is the birthday of the late author—whose name was Theodor Seuss Geisel —a spokeswoman for Dr. Seuss Enterprises said in an email. “Dr. Seuss Enterprises spent time listening to our audience, teachers, and experts before coming to this decision,” she said.

The announcement comes at a fraught moment for the publishing community, which finds itself caught in political and cultural crosshairs. Last week four, Republican senators sent a letter to Amazon.com Inc. Chief Executive Jeff Bezos, asking why Amazon had removed a book about transgender issues that had been on sale on the platform for about three years. Amazon, which didn’t have a comment on the letter, said it reserved the right not to sell certain titles based on its content guidelines for books.

Random House Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Penguin Random House, the primary publisher of Dr. Seuss’s children’s books, said it stopped publishing the six books in question last year at Dr. Seuss Enterprises’ behest. The titles weren’t top sellers, the publisher said.

Random House Books for Young Readers said it would continue to publish the late author’s best-known works, which include “The Cat in the Hat,” “Green Eggs and Ham,” and “How the Grinch Stole Christmas!”

Several booksellers on Tuesday said they have no plans to remove any Dr. Seuss titles for sale. “We have several shelves of Dr. Seuss books, and have no plans to remove them,” said Cass Moskowitz, assistant manager at the Books of Wonder bookstore in New York City. “If the depictions aren’t great, sometimes things have to be retired for a reason,” she said. “We learn and grow as a society.”

Lori Fazio, chief operating officer of R.J. Julia Booksellers, a bookstore based in Madison, Conn., said, “We understand the issues out there but we will have the books in stock. We have no plans to drop any titles.”