Theodore Suess Geisel was born in 1904 in Springfield, Massachusetts and later went on to attend Dartmouth college. Taking a particular interest in writing and drawing, he became a cartoonist and had his drawings published in many famous magazines at the time. In 1937, he published his first children's book called And to think that I saw it on Mulberry Street. Later, in 1941, he started writing political cartoons for a tabloid newspaper called PM, and was made the paper's editorial cartoonist. Geisel would not write another children's book for seven years.
In his political cartoons, Geisel mostly targeted the Axis powers and isolationists. He depicted isolationists as betrayers of European countries for not caring about the people suffering at the hands of the Axis powers. He also wrote political cartoons advocating for equal rights among races.
After making political cartoons for 7 years, Geisel went back to writing children's books, and was extremely successful. Although he is more well known for his many books we know and love, it is interesting to look back and see how he was also an influential person as a propaganda cartoonist.
https://www.brainpickings.org/2012/08/10/dr-seusss-wartime-propaganda-cartoons/
http://www.drseussart.com/biowwii/
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/01/dr-seuss-protest-icon/515031/
Great post Ryan. Never knew Doctor Seuss wrote anything other than children's books especially any political cartoons. This was a perfect snapshot of the evolution of Geisel's writing career from children's book written to propaganda cartoonist and the example pictures really accented the piece well. Something I learned was that, while Geisel had originally been very anti-japanese in many of his cartoons, after a visit to japan in 1953 where he saw the terrible aftermath of the Hiroshima bombing, he make a public apology in the form of a book.... Horton Hears a Who!
ReplyDelete"published in 1954, is about an elephant that has to protect a speck of dust populated by little tiny people. The book’s hopeful, inclusive refrain – “A person is a person no matter how small” -- is about as far away as you can get from his ignoble words about the Japanese a decade earlier. He even dedicated the book to “My Great Friend, Mitsugi Nakamura of Kyoto, Japan.”" --http://www.openculture.com/2014/08/dr-seuss-draws-racist-anti-japanese-cartoons-during-ww-ii.html
I remember we looked at some of his propaganda work in CWI class last year. I remember that all of his drawings were the exact same style as the drawings in his famous books, which I thought was very enthralling. As Leah mentioned in her comment, I didn't know that "Horton Hears a Who" was an apology book to Japan. Interestingly, I found a news article in which a school rejected Melania Trump's gift because it had some racist propaganda against African American stereotypes. This is pretty interesting as (I'm assuming that) these books are still on sale today, and how you can look back to our history by reading these books.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.newsweek.com/was-dr-seuss-racist-dr-seuss-melania-trump-book-donation-melania-and-dr-seuss-674612
Love this post. We all remember growing up and reading Dr. Seuss books. We start out as kids reading them and then we re-read and look at these same books as we grow and are older and wiser. It is nice to look at the positive messaging that Dr. Seuss writes in his books and then to see where his political views stem from. Time to re-read all of his books with a new focus on is writings.
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