Mcelligot's Pool

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The main character is a boy who decides to go fishing in McElligot’s Pool. An adult tells him that the pool is too small and nothing lives there so he’s wasting his time. Most of the book is made up of the child imagining how the small pool may be connected to the ocean underground and through this connection any number of unusual fish from around the world may in fact turn up in this small pool. The book is full of Seuss’s own imaginary creatures. In May of 1954, Life published a report concerning illiteracy among school children. The report said, among other things, that children were having trouble to read because their books were boring. This inspired Geisel's publisher, and prompted him to send Geisel a list of 400 words he felt were important, asked him to cut the list to 250 words (the publishers idea of how many words at one time a first grader could absorb), and write a book. Nine months later, Geisel, using 220 of the words given to him published The Cat in the Hat, which went on to instant success. Given this research, and LCPS' focus on equity and culturally responsive instruction, LCPS provided this guidance to schools during the past couple of years to not connect Read Across America Day exclusively with Dr. Seuss' birthday," the district said in a statement. We are committed to action. To that end, Dr. Seuss Enterprises, working with a panel of experts, including educators, reviewed our catalog of titles and made the decision last year to cease publication and licensing of the following titles: 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 . These books portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong. You may have heard by now that Dr. Seuss Enterprises LP, which manages the beloved author’s publishing interests, has decided to stop printing six of the author’s books. In a statement released on March 2, Dr. Seuss’s birthday, the organization said:

Again, since I can’t find my own copy I can’t verify there isn’t something else in it that someone may find offensive. If so, it’s odd that the study looking for such offenses didn’t flag it. From what I remember, this is a pretty great book for kids and one I’m sad to see go out of print under a cloud of racism. 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. 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.

Selected

Pratt, Mark (March 2, 2021). "Six Dr. Seuss books won't be published for racist images". CTV News . Retrieved March 2, 2021. In this story we get to meet Marco from Dr. Seuss's first book and he is at McElligot's pool. He goes there one day to simply catch a fish and the farmer tells him that he will never catch a fish. He tells him that that is the location where people dump cans and bottles but no fish. Marco realizes while that may be true it is still possible to catch fish, all you have to do is be patient. When that idea comes in, his imagination goes wild like in the first book and goes into details of the different type of fishes that may come up to the surface of McElligot's pool.

A number of books by the beloved children's author Dr. Seuss will no longer be published over their racist and insensitive imagery. For decades, the works of Dr. Seuss (real name Theodor Seuss Geisel) have been considered both iconic childhood classics and bastions of liberalism. They are lauded for their celebration of all that makes us different, and Seuss books like Horton Hears a Who and The Sneetches appear frequently in anti-racism curricula for children. Gross, Jenny (March 2, 2021), "6 Dr. Seuss Books Will No Longer Be Published Over Offensive Images", The New York Times , retrieved March 2, 2021

Identifying, and Valuing First Edition Dr Seuss Books

The six titles were selected after consultation with a “panel of experts,” according to Dr. Seuss Enterprises. The books will no longer be printed or licensed, meaning that the titles will also not be available for sale as e-books. McElligot’s Pool” is one of Dr. Seuss’ earlier books and it is about how a young boy explains to an old man how he imagines that there will be millions of fish of different shapes and colors in McElligot’s Pool. “McElligot’s Pool” may be a bit behind for today’s kids, but it is truly a creative book that started up Dr. Seuss’ popular line of rhyming books. There aren’t that many racial caricatures in Dr. Seuss’s children’s books, mostly because there aren’t that many nonwhite characters in Dr. Seuss’s children’s books. In their study, Ishizuka and Stephens counted 45 characters of color among the 2,240 human characters who appear in Dr. Seuss’s 50 books, which works out to just 2 percent. Notably, all of those characters are male. There are no girls or women of color in the Dr. Seuss canon.

McElligot’s Pool follows a boy imagining the far-out things he’ll catch while fishing in a stagnant pond, including “Eskimo Fish from beyond Hudson Bay.” 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. Dr. Seuss is famous for his many children’s books. Books that spark the imagination. Surprise, and amaze. There is a large collection of old animated shorts based on them. And these has been several movies both animated and life action. He also wrote two books that though written and illustrated in a similar style and format are considered adult books they are The Seven Lady Godivas and The Butter Battle Book. Butter Battle is a commentary on war and is often found in the children’s sections in bookstores and libraries. Godivas I believe is long out of print, I believe the last printing was in 1988. And I am only aware of it because it is the favorite book of a friend. Reports about the decision came on the same day as the late author and illustrator's birthday, which is celebrated as Read Across America Day.

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American trade editions of the book were printed in 1947, 1974, 1975, and 1992, and a library edition was printed in 1999. [3] Withdrawal from publication [ edit ]