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March 2021 Tuesday Topic Dr. Seuss, Library Policies, Censorship, “Cancel Culture” & Choosing Books to Read Aloud, Display and Promote Welcome to Tuesday Topics, a monthly series covering topics with intellectual freedom implications for libraries of all types. Each message is prepared by a member of OLA's Intellectual Freedom Committee or a guest writer. Questions can be directed to the author of the topic or to the IFC Committee. “Six Dr. Seuss books — including ‘And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street’ and ‘If I Ran the Zoo’ — will stop being published because of racist and insensitive imagery, the business that preserves and protects the author’s legacy said Tuesday. ‘These books portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong,’ Dr. Seuss Enterprises told The Associated Press in a statement that coincided with the late author and illustrator’s birthday.” - Washington Post, March 2, 2021 Many well-known and beloved authors are problematic due to racist imagery or stereotypes. Quite a few books fall into this category, as librarians and educators have long been aware. Examples include the “Little House on the Prairie” books, “Dr. Doolittle”, “Peter Pan”, and “The Indian in the Cupboard”. Authors may also be problematic due to personal behavior and publicly expressed beliefs -- writers such as Roald Dahl, J.K. Rowling and others come to mind.
This week, Dr. Seuss is in the news after his estate decided to stop publishing six of his 48 books. Most libraries do own some or all of the six Dr. Seuss books in question. As public institutions, libraries must abide by the First Amendment, and cannot remove books because we disagree with the ideas in those books - that would be censorship. Our libraries keep books unless they meet our school board-adopted criteria for deselection (weeding/removal): they are rarely or no longer checked out by library users, they are damaged or unapppealing in appearance, they contain incorrect outdated facts, and so on. Every library has - or should have - a policy and a form community members may fill out to ask for a book’s removal; for schools, that decision often goes to the school board. However, while we cannot remove library books, we as librarians and library staff can and do choose not to promote every book in the library. We choose better, more recent, more diverse, anti-racist titles to highlight instead. We can decide not to add the problematic books to book displays, read them aloud to classes, or recommend them to teachers and students. We may also let library users know about racism, stereotypes, or other issues in books, and then suggest different titles as alternatives. We also often select books other than Dr. Seuss for celebrations of Read Across America Week (Mar. 1 -5). This is the approach a school district took this year in Virginia, and it’s a good one. They did not remove any library books, they simply made better choices for their celebration. As Loudoun County Public Schools said in their statement, "We continue to encourage our young readers to read all types of books that are inclusive, diverse and reflective of our student community, not simply celebrate Dr. Seuss.”
display, and recommend books that provide windows and mirrors for all students and their families. -- Miranda Doyle, District Librarian, Lake Oswego School District Intellectual Freedom Chair, Oregon Association of School Libraries [email protected]
