Parents and educators at an elementary school in Cambridge, Massachusetts are split over a divisive issue: Should kids be learning how to hop on pop?
On Sept. 1, to usher in back-to-school season, US first lady Melania Trump sent a selection of 10 Dr. Seuss books to one school in each state.
This week, Liz Phipps Soeiro, a librarian at Cambridgeport School, a public elementary school, responded with a letter published at The Horn Book, saying she wouldn’t accept the books. Soeiro called Dr. Seuss cliché and racist. She suggested Trump be more imaginative in her selection, and included an alternate list of 10 picture books for kids.Soeiro has a point, no doubt. Trump’s staff could not have been lazier in choosing obvious American mega-classics, and students could benefit from more copies of lesser known titles about non-white kids. But in pitting Seuss against social justice, Soeiro misses one of the fundamental reasons his rhyme-saturated books have endured, and why we should keep reading them to kids.
Soeiro’s is a specific kind of list, for a specific kind of ultra-woke parent. It includes Auntie Yang’s Great Soybean Picnic, by Ginnie Lo with illustrations by Beth Lo; Drum Dream Girl, by Margarita Engle with illustrations by Rafael López; and Separate Is Never Equal, by Duncan Tonatiuh. These are parents who, in Soeiro’s words, want their kids to be aware from a very young age of “the beautiful resilience of children who stand up to racism and oppression and for social justice and reform” and “children who are trying to connect with parents who are incarcerated simply because of their immigration status.
” Of the 10 books she suggests, nine are about human characters with brown skin…The post The progressive argument for reading Dr. Seuss books to kids appeared first on FeedBox.