The Dr. Seuss issue

[Lynx-lynx]

A (genuine) query - if Dr Seuss was from a country other than the US, would the books nominated by the estate have been treated the way they are now, discontinued for portrayal issues

If the author had been English, or French (or you nominate the country) would this discussion be under consideration)

Is this decision by the estate one specific to US cultural norms (whatever that is) and not as something other countries would have been insistent about.

If so, why not let other countries decide whether to continue with the purchase of the books.

[shalym]

Originally Posted by Lynx-lynx

A (genuine) query - if Dr Seuss was from a country other than the US, would the books nominated by the estate have been treated the way they are now, discontinued for portrayal issues

If the author had been English, or French (or you nominate the country) would this discusson be under consideration)

Is this decision by the estate one specific to US cultural norms (whatever that ia) and not as something other countries would have been insistent about.

If so, why not let other countries decide whether to continue with the purchase of the books.

Well, that would be up to the copyright holder, of course. It's not the government of the US that decided to stop selling the books, it's the copyright holders.

Shari

[Lynx-lynx]

Originally Posted by shalym

Well, that would be up to the copyright holder, of course. It's not the government of the US that decided to stop selling the books, it's the copyright holders.

Shari

My point is though, would the discussion have taken place outside of the US by the copyright holders.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by Lynx-lynx

My point is though, would the discussion have taken place outside of the US by the copyright holders.

Legally, I think it could. As far as I know, copyright is everywhere considered to include the right of the copyright holder to withdraw publication rights.

The Seuss situation is a special example of self-censorship, comparable to that where an author avoids topics where his or her views would give offense to powerful others. And self-censorship is found in many nations.

Of course, the Seuss case isn't one where the author self-censors, but rather it is being done by his legatees. That has to be rare anywhere, because, until recently, an author's backlist almost always became uneconomical to keep in print long before copyright expired. With eBooks, and perhaps print on demand, that has changed.

Withdrawing eBooks, because the author's ideas generate outrage in succeeding generations, is something new. The U.S. may be first there, but I think will not be the last.

[SteveEisenberg]

Here is the American Library Association's list of challenged and banned children's books:

http://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/f...childrensbooks

The Seuss titles currently on it are:

Geisel, Theodor Seuss. Hop on Pop: The Simplest Seuss for Youngest Use

Geisel, Theodor Seuss. If I Ran the Zoo

Only the second one above has yet been withdrawn.


Will they add five more to the list -- as I think they should -- or will they give in to self-censorship and take Seuss off the list? I don't know.

[Lynx-lynx]

Yes, Steve I see your points. But my referral post is actually questioning whether it's a curent US cultural norm that this has occurred, and wouldn't have occurred elsewhere.

[hildea]

Originally Posted by Question Mark

I don't recall saying or intimating that magicians are an ethnic group. They are, however, a group/subset of performers.

Does Dr, Seuss' portrayal of magicians here tell children that being a magician is weird or exotic and that it is a less noble profession than being a mayor in a top hat or a musician in a band?

Did magicians get the right to vote in the US in living memory? Are magicians being beaten up on the street because people blame them for the magician virus?
I started typing a long list of instances of current and past racist discrimination here, but it shouldn't be necessary.

Imagine yourself being a child of mostly Chinese descent, or a parent of Chinese descent reading for your child, and coming across that page. Can you seriously not see why the Seuss rights owners decided to stop reprinting it?

Originally Posted by Lynx-lynx

A (genuine) query - if Dr Seuss was from a country other than the US, would the books nominated by the estate have been treated the way they are now, discontinued for portrayal issues

If the author had been English, or French (or you nominate the country) would this discusson be under consideration)

Is this decision by the estate one specific to US cultural norms (whatever that ia) and not as something other countries would have been insistent about.

If so, why not let other countries decide whether to continue with the purchase of the books.

Seuss is pretty marginal in Norway. A couple of his books were translated to Norwegian in 1972, and six more in 2005-2012. Searching in a bookstore now, I find none of them in Norwegian, a few of them in English.

We've had a few similar situations here:

• The Swedish publishers of Pippi Longstocking wanted to change the word "negro" in one of the books. Astrid Lindgren was alive, so they asked her, and she was in favour of the change. Just like in this case, there was a flurry of panic among the usual suspects, dishonestly claiming that this was an example of censorship from the government. (I can't find out when this happened, but Lindgren died in 2002.)
• In 2006, the Norwegian publishers of one of Torbjørn Egner's songbooks removed a song about an African child, which has all the cliches you'd expect from a Norwegian writer writing for children in 1954. Again, lots of discussion and controversy.
• And not quite the same, but related: Every year in December, there's a news story about some primary school somewhere deciding to change the usual Christmas celebrations and decorations to a more generic winter celebration, to accomodate a religious minority. The usual suspects write about Muslims threatening Norwegian culture, the school clarifies that they do this because of some Christian minority which regards a lot of the Norwegian Christmas traditions as heathen, and the noise dies down. Until next year.

[DrNefario]

Tintin in the Congo was withdrawn. Quite an interesting case, in fact: they tried to reissue it for adult collectors, but it was still getting shelved in the children's section, so they pulled it again.

I don't know what the deal is with Enid Blyton's Golliwog books, but I'd be surprised if they were still available in original form.

The main difference here is the amount of publicity.

Children's book get revised and withdrawn all the time. You can't expect children to make allowances for the time a book was written, as you can with adults reading Whose Body? As far as I was concerned, it was Tom Baker in all those Jon Pertwee Doctor Who books I read.

[John F]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

Legally, I think it could. As far as I know, copyright is everywhere considered to include the right of the copyright holder to withdraw publication rights.

...

So if the copyright holder signed a contract with a publisher for X years, the copyright holder can withdraw publication rights (no new copies can be produced/sold)?

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by John F

So if the copyright holder signed a contract with a publisher for X years, the copyright holder can withdraw publication rights (no new copies can be produced/sold)?

Depends entirely on the specifics of the contract the rights holder signed with the publisher, I should think.

[Question Mark]

Originally Posted by hildea

Did magicians get the right to vote in the US in living memory? Are magicians being beaten up on the street because people blame them for the magician virus?
I started typing a long list of instances of current and past racist discrimination here, but it shouldn't be necessary.

Oh, I'm well aware of the discrimination which Chinese people faced when they first came to North America, and the discrimination which many continue to face.

Originally Posted by hildea

Imagine yourself being a child of mostly Chinese descent, or a parent of Chinese descent reading for your child, and coming across that page. Can you seriously not see why the Seuss rights owners decided to stop reprinting it?

Are other characters pointing at the Chinese character and laughing? Is the Chinese character being treated differently than other characters on the same page? Not that I can see. Quite the opposite.

In such a case a child of Chinese descent might be pleased to see that their culture has been included in a Dr. Seuss book.

And once again, as the times changed, the yellow skin colour and the queue were removed from the figure in question.

[John F]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Depends entirely on the specifics of the contract the rights holder signed with the publisher, I should think.

I would think that also. Publishers invest some amount of money, for the copyright holder to be able to stop publication seems a extreme.

[meeera]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Do you have the books in question in your library? Have you read them?

“And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street”
“If I Ran the Zoo”
“McElligot’s Pool”
“On Beyond Zebra!”
“Scrambled Eggs Super!”
“The Cat’s Quizzer”

We have three - Mulberry, Zebra, and Scrambled. They remain in excellent condition, unlike many of our other Seusses. Just one datapoint from one child's life.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by meeera

We have three - Mulberry, Zebra, and Scrambled. They remain in excellent condition, unlike many of our other Seusses. Just one datapoint from one child's life.

Thanks. Good to know. But I was mostly addressing pwalker8's mistaken assumption that I was saying Dr. Seuss in general didn't sell well when I was (pretty clearly) talking about the 6 books in question specifically. It still seems reasonable to me that these 6 are pretty obscure to anyone other than aficionados. Of which I'm admittedly not one. I somehow skipped the Seuss phase in my young reading career. Of the things I remember most vividly, I went from picture books, to Curious George, to the Hardy Boys, to the adult section of the library.

[Pajamaman]

'Banned' Dr. Seuss Books Delisted on eBay After Selling for Thousands

I wonder why ebay has taken the draconian step of of banning the relevant books from its marketplace. Should the said Seuss books be banned from ebay? Would simply adding a content warning suffice?