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On beyond zebra12/2/2023 If I am lucky, someone will come along to offer me a new perspective or alternative. There are times in life I find myself thinking I have seen it all, or I know it all about something. If I am honest with myself, I am more often like Cornelius than the narrator. There are so many new and wonderful things that our narrator sees and can introduce to us. The narrator's alphabet begins where the standard one ends. He goes on to describe all the additional letters he needs to spell about all the unique things he sees. The narrator announces that most people stop at Z, but not he. Because Z is as far as the alphabet goes."īut Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o’Dell is in for a shock when our narrator picks up the chalk to draw one more letter. Seuss wrote this beautiful book called "On Beyond Zebra!" It starts with Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell announcing that he has learned all the letters of the alphabet and thus he states, "So now I know everything anyone knows from beginning to end. Join 1,080 other subscribers Follow MASKED LIBRARY on WordPress.Dr. What is offensive about these images? What can be changed? Should they be changed? How can we use this moment to try better next time? Meanwhile, sales of Cat in the Hat and the other popular Seuss titles increase and still no one cares about the books that were pulled partially because no one cared about them to begin with. Without any attention on the pages in question, there was also no discussion. The vast majority of articles had no mention of the images in question in any of the books, let alone all six. The general public who did not read or listen to the entire story acted like it was the entire Dr Seuss catalog that would no longer be published. Dr Seuss books were selling like crazy, but none of them were these six. By discontinuing six books at once, the focus shifted to all of the Dr Seuss books. Pulling one book for a good reason singles out that one book and may have brought more attention to isolated images. Then, spinning that financial concern into pulling all of the books for inappropriate drawings. Now that I have read all six of these books I think the decision to pull them was half valid concern over images and half saving money as a publisher. No one would notice if Spazzim is missing, nor the new letter he represents, the letter Spazz. If anything, he looks proud and respectable riding atop his Spazzim.Īlso, as mentioned before, nothing about the image or text here is essential to the book. There’s no portrayal of anything from Arab culture in inappropriate ways. Unlike the Asian stereotypes that have been discussed before, Nazzim isn’t shown in any negative way. Really it looks more like a reindeer with a hump than a camel with antlers. “A beast who belongs to the Nazzim of Bazzim.” A vaguely Middle Eastern looking man riding a Spazzim which I guess because of the hump resembles a camel. The best guess for On Beyond Zebra is the Spazzim. When these books were pulled the Dr Seuss estate did not explain the reasons for each book. There’s also lots of tongue twister sentences to trip up parents while they read to their children. If you enjoyed If I Ran the Zoo or Scrambled Eggs Super, here are more crazy new designs for all sorts of animals. Seuss designs new letters and uses them to name more fantastical creatures from his imagination. On Beyond Zebra (1955) stars a young boy in school telling an even younger student about all of the letters that come after Z. This is the last of the six pulled Dr Seuss books that I will discuss on the site.
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