Mcelligot's Pool

Product Information

Dr. Seuss is one of the most beloved children’s authors in the country, and signed and first-edition Dr. Seuss books are valuable among book collectors. In addition, some collectors are known as completists, meaning they seek out every single published work by their favorite authors. And I Saw It On Mulberry Streetwas actually the first children’s book published by Dr. Seuss, which means it has intrinsic value for collectors. Sign up for The Weeds newsletter . Every Friday, you’ll get an explainer of a big policy story from the week, a look at important research that recently came out, and answers to reader questions — to guide you through the first 100 days of President Joe Biden’s administration. Of the six, the problematic imagery in On Beyond Zebra! is probably the least obvious. The book catalogues a whimsical set of new letters in the alphabet, and briefly features the “Nazzim of Bazzim,” a figure of unspecified nationality riding a camel-like creature called a “Spazzim.” Dr. Seuss’s work for adults includes some pretty unambiguously racist images. Husband-and-wife team Katie Ishizuka and Ramón Stephens, who run the Conscious Kid Social Justice Library, developed a study of Dr. Seuss’s history of racism that features a small sampling.

The six books which contain the offensive imagery are 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. Ceasing sales of these books is only part of our commitment and our broader plan to ensure Dr. Seuss Enterprises' catalog represents and supports all communities and families." I wonder if the offense here is as specific as the images above or if the publisher just decided the whole concept of this book was Orientalist in some broad sense, i.e. othering. All of the made-up fish are certainly exotic and the book does present the idea that far away things are different from what you might find in a small pool nearby. I guess I could see someone finding that offensive these days but in this case I’m definitely not convinced that’s a good thing. Oh the sea is full of a number of fish. If a fellow is patient, he might get his wish. And that's why I think that I'm not such a fool when I sit here and fish in McElligot's Pool.

The American Eclipse of 2017

In 1950, McElligot's Pool won the Pacific Northwest Library Association Young Reader's Choice Award, and in 1948, it won the Caldecott Honor.

Inuit people, aka Eskimos, really did wear coats with fur lining around their faces and build igloos. Maybe it’s the spear that’s stereotypical? Maybe it’s the fact the fish have fur around their faces? But there are still things for kids about Eskimos which rely on basically the same images. The odd thing, though, is that the color graphics alternate with the gray-and-white ones, and I don't understand why. I did love the one with the "flexible" strut holding up a whale of an outcropping of land on which sits the town, LOL. While it was interesting to see what Marco would come up with next, I found the book just a little too long for my taste. It's also slightly dated with the stereotypical depiction of Inuit, going so far as to use the term "Eskimo". But it was 1947, and it's unfair to judge books from the past against our current standards. (Look at it as a mini history lesson instead.)But the children’s literature world is in the middle of figuring out exactly how central Dr. Seuss should be to its ecosystem as our culture reevaluates the racist ideas that run very clearly through his adult work and arguably through his work for children. And, by extension, it is in the middle of sorting out how it wants to handle the many other pieces of beloved children’s literature that include harmful racial attitudes: books like Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series, with its fraught treatment of Indigenous peoples; the Narnia books, with their deeply uncomfortable Middle Eastern villains; the redface fantasies of Peter Pan. In this story a young man is fishing in a small pond, young Marco has his rod and his bait. He is sitting and he waits. But a farmer comes by and states that the body of water is much to small, and just used to dump garbage. And that Marco is wasting his time. But Marco supposes that the pond connects to an underground stream. And wonders if that stream connects to a river, and out to the oceans. And because of that he imagines all kinds of fish, and creatures he might catch if he has patience.