Dr. Seuss Goes to War (Minear)

Dr. Seuss Goes to War: The World War II Editorial Cartoons of Theodor Seuss Geisel, Richard H. Minear (Author), Dr. Seuss (Illustrator), Art Spiegelman (Foreword)

I'm a math teacher but I work as a substitute. One day late last month, I had a coverage in a history class, and as I sat at the teacher's desk as glanced back at his bookcase, one title jumped out at me: Dr. Seuss Goes to War.

I had known that Theodor Geisel (aka, Dr. Seuss) had done war cartoons, but I don't think I've ever seen more than a sample or two. And suddenly here they all were! (Not all of them, actually, which I didn't know until I read the text.)

I couldn't let the opportunity pass, so I took the book back to the teachers' room during my prep period, and by the end of the day, I had read all of the comics. However, I had little time to read the commentary. The good news is that the book was available as an ebook from the public library. The bad news is that this book sucks as an ebook.

Part of the problem with reading just the comics is that there are references to historical people who I hadn't a clue about. I knew (from all things role-playing materials) the Charles Limbaugh became involved in politics after flying across the ocean, but some of the other names meant nothing to me. One was a world leader while others were editorial and opinion writers. Seuss had a problem with the New York Daily News along with some other publications as well.

One of the problems with the ebook is that the comics are grouped by topic, not chronologically. And the text is heavily annotated -- there are links to each of the comics, which is great, but jumping back to the text is a pain in the backside. This is one time where it would be better to have a finger holding one page while you flip to the other. Maybe there are easier ways to do this in Kindle, but that's beyond my current knowledge of its functionality.

Another surprise reading through the book: a Horton-like elephant appears in several comics, with tusks in two of them, even though he's supposed to be an Indian elephant. At first, I thought this was a prototype, but somewhere the text (or possibly, I "googled" it) I discovered that Horton Hatches the Egg was published in 1940, which was before Seuss went to work for P.M., and created these comics. I never read Yertle the Turtle, either as a kid, or to my kids or nieces or nephews, but the proto-Yertle appears in these pages.

A fascinating read, but if you can, go for the paperback.

Post-script: When I searched for the book image and author information, I found out that the paperback was published September 2001. An odd time to be going to war, don't you think?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

1632 (or The Ring of Fire) (Flint)

Image
1632 (or The Ring of Fire) , by Eric Flint, 2000 In the year 2000, a freak occurrence, referred to as The Ring of Fire , sent the town of Grantsville, Virginia back through time and space, swapping places with a plot of land in central Germany in 1632, in the middle of the Thirty Years War. The small mining town quickly realizes the unlikeliness of a second cataclysm putting right what had been torn apart and sets out to acclimate to their way of life. And, of course, survive. Their weapons and technology give them a great advantage, but they no longer have the industry to produce that technology. Nor do the have the industry to produce the industry ... An alternate timeline is born as the United States of America is founded 144 years early (and on a different continent). History plays on around them. The book divides its time between brutal battles fought across Germany, building a new society and some overlong passages on just how well the Americans are getting along with thei...
Read more

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Halloween Rain (Golden, Holder)

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Halloween Rain, Golden, Holder, 1997 An episode of the show which I hadn't seen. Killer scarecrow that comes alive during the rains on Halloween. Samhain can see through the eyes of any pumpkin and move if it's on a scarecrow. Quick read. Should've been quicker. Mind candy. There's a line that I left out that says, "Cute line about coupe....", except that I can't read my own handwriting, nor remember what the cute line was actually about. I'm also not sure if this was actually an episode, or if it was my belief at the time that it was based on one particular episode and not based on the characters from the series. Ultimately, it was forgettable.
Read more

Two Short Books

Image
Big Bullet Monster Bomb: lost little things: a short story for mature readers by Adam Archer (2020) The Race by John Russo (2021) (Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.) I don't remember where I found these stories. I don't think it was reddit. It could've been on Facebook or Twitter. Nothing about the Bullet Bomb book was particularly geared toward mature readers, other than the cover showing a woman wearing rags that barely cover what they need to. It seems like a story set in a larger world that I haven't read but I have no idea of this is the case. It's post-apocalyptic and the last of the human race is slowly morphing into cratures. This much is interesting. The main character is pulling a sled of her belongings (including guns) and looking for some place to hide so she can sleep. Her sleep c...
Read more