Thank you, Joel Pett, for assuring us Dr. Seuss will remain a treasure beyond measure

When things happen that we can’t quite figure out, it takes a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist to wade through the muckity muck and, with a picture and a few words, he helps us understand things we think are kind of silly.

Thank you, Joel Pett, for your cartoon defending Dr. Seuss, who “doodled not so cool doodles now causing oodles of angst and distress.” Before we can accept your conclusion that Dr. Seuss “will remain as a cultural treasure, teaching with creatures and spreading great pleasure,” maybe we should take a look at other Dr. Seuss books, that. so far, have stayed off EBay’s list of dangerous books likely to turn children into racists before they even learn what a racist is.

Remember the Sneetches? The Star-Belly Sneetches thought they were better than the Plain-Belly Sneetches. Why? Did they get their Stars because they were all white? Or because they were all straight – no LGBYTQs? Or because they were all right-handed? (Oh, maybe you didn’t know that religious leaders once declared that left-handedness was a sign of the Devil? Maybe in third world countries, teachers are still rapping children’s hands when they write with their left hands.)

Well, I’m not sure why the Star-Belly Sneetches thought they were the best Sneetches, but after the Fix-it-Up Chappie put stars on the Plain-Belly Sneetches, the Star-Belly Sneetches still thought they were the best, so they had their stars removed. The stars came off and went back on so much that neither the Plain nor the Star-Bellies knew “whether this one was that one…or that one was this one or which one was what one or what one was who.” So this book seems to be safe unless the EBay book censors know more about those stars than I do.

When people are marching in the streets carrying signs and clubs and shouting, kids may find all that noise scary. But even with all the noise, Horton the Elephant hears a little person crying for help, and he says, “I’ll just have to save him. Because, after all, a person’s a person, no matter how small.”

Kids understand being small when everybody else is bigger and stronger, and they don’t like it when big people bully other people. Horton doesn’t like bullies either. He just wants to save a little person who needs help. The other animals make fun of Horton.

“I think you’re a fool,” said the sour kangaroo, and the young kangaroo in her pouch says, “Me too.” She should know that children are born without prejudice. “They have to be taught to be afraid of people whose skin is a different shade.” (Rodgers and Hammerstein)

But when Horton rescues all the little Who people, they celebrate and make so much noise that everyone hears, even the Sour Kangaroo. Dr. Seuss’s “Horton Hears a Who” should survive EBay’s censorship.

“The Lorax” is the only Seuss book that makes me sad. When the last Truffula Tree is chopped down, do children feel as sad as I do? Do they wonder why the Thneeds factories are allowed to dump their Gluppity-Glupp goo in the ponds where the Humming-Fish hummed? Children don’t understand “It’s the economy, Stupid,” and neither do I.

I’ll bet kids worry about the Brown Bar-ba-loots who ate Truffula Fruits. Now where will they find food? And the factories made such smogulous smoke that the poor Swomee Swans couldn’t sing a note. Have you heard any Swomee Swans lately? I haven’t.

But here’s something exciting. The Sierra Club says some scientists at the University of Kentucky are turning Gluppity Glupp they call “Coal ash” into something useful. I can’t tell you what that is because I’m not that smart.

The Lorax leaves a message for children: “ UNLESS someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”

I’ll bet these coal ash scientists heard that message when they were kids.

Shirley Spires Baechtold is a native Kentuckian, writer, musician, and professor emeritus of English at EKU.